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«"~*  Edith  Sic 


1 

i 


MWMIWIIHaillilWIlllillli^ 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 
FREDERIC  THOMAS  BLANCHARD 


NEW    AND    OLD 


\ 


in 


Ocllbh   V^ichel. 


tajcil     _?-, 


NEW   AND   OLD 

BY 

EDITH    SICHEL 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 

A.    C.    BRADLEY 


NEW  YORK 
E.  P.   DUTTON   AND   COMPANY 

1918 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


PR 

54-52 

S2I35 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

Extracts  from  Letters 

Thoughts 

Poems        .... 

Gladys  Leonora   Pratt  . 

Women  as  Letter-Writers 

A  French  Governess 

Charlotte  Yonge  as  a  Chronicler 

Emily  Lawless     . 


19 

61 

75 

82 

97 

.       116 

141 

151 

Articles  from  '  The  Pilot/  etc.  : — 


'loiza  .  .  .  .  .  .180 

'  samuel*:  christmas  eve      .  .  .  .183 

the  confessions  of  an  amateur  philanthropist  .  185 
the  art  of  conversation  in  england  and  france  191 
joseph  joachim:  a  rememrrance       .  .  .1,97 


Articles  from  '  The  Times  Literary  Supplement  ' 

the  letters  of  a  saint 
a  medieval  garner  . 
queens,  knights,  and  pawns 
vincent  de  paul 
a  heroine  of  corneille 


203 
207 
214 

219 
226 


iC 


Vlll 


xNEW  AND  OLD 


LOUIS    XIV 

DUCHESS    SARAH 

ROUSSEAU 

THE    UNSELFISH    EGOIST 

HANNAH    MORE 

THE    AGE    OF    LOUIS    XV 

MADAME    DU    DEFFAND    AND    HORACE    WALPOLE 

MADEMOISELLE    DE    LESPINASSE 

A    KEEPER    OF    ROYAL    SECRETS 

ALWAYS    A    BOURBON      . 

ROBERT    SOUTHEY 

ELIZABETH    BARRETT    BROWNING 

THE    BRAHMAN    OF    CONCORD      . 

SAINTS    AND    MYSTICS     . 

THE    FRENCH    POINT    OF    VIEW  . 

ZOLA,    MANET,    AND    THE    ART    OF    EFFECTS 

THE    FANTASTIC    ELEMENT    AND    MR.    BARRIE 


233 

239 
246 
255 
263 
269 
275 
285 
293 
302 
309 
318 
328 
333 
342 
350 
356 


INTRODUCTION 

Edith  Sichel  was  bom  in  December,  1862,  and  died  in 
the  summer  of  1914.  Her  parents  were  Jewish  by  descent, 
and  in  religion  Christians.  London,  her  birthplace,  con- 
tinued throughout  her  life  to  be  her  home.  She  was  known 
to  the  reading  public  as  a  writer  of  books  and  of  papers  in 
magazines ;  and  she  also  contributed  unsigned  articles  to 
the  Pilot  in  1901,  and  to  the  Literary  Supplement  of  the 
Times  from  that  year  onwards.  To  a  large  circle  of  acquaint- 
ances and  friends  she  was  known  as  a  hostess,  guest,  or 
companion,  whose  society  was  made  delightful  by  her 
buoyancy  and  gaiety,  her  spontaneous  and  sometimes 
exuberant  flow  of  wit  and  humour,  her  quick  and  vivid 
intellect,  the  width  and  keenness  of  her  interests,  her 
pleasure  in  discussion,  her  entire  freedom  from  vanity  or 
egotism,  her  kindness,  and  her  enjoyment  of  other  people's 
enjoyment.  By  the  members  of  her  family  and  by  her 
intimate  friends  she  was  deeply  loved  and  (strange  as  the 
word  would  have  sounded  to  her)  revered.  Finally,  she 
was  known  to  a  host  of  poor  people,  and  especially  of  poor 
girls,  to  whom  she  gave  without  stint  her  time,  her  means, 
her  mind  and  her  heart.  And  in  all  these  aspects  of  her  life, 
on  which  I  will  say  something  in  turn,  she  showed,  in  an 
eminent  degree,  one  and  the  same  nature,  character,  and 
way  of  regarding  life. 

Though  Edith  Sichel's  love  of  books  could  hardly  have 
been  stronger  than  her  love  of  Nature  and  of  Art,  the  subjects 
of  most  of  her  own  writings  came  to  her  through  books.    And 


2  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  majority  of  these  subjects,  though  she  read  widely  in 
various  languages,  were  either  English  or  French.     She  was 
versed  in  German  literature,  enjoyed  greatly  her  visits  to 
picture-galleries  and  museums  in  Germany,  and  supremely 
the  musical  festivals  she  attended  there  ;  and,  as  it  happened, 
in  the  last  months  of  her  life  was  delighting  two  young 
friends  by  the  lessons  she  gave  them  on  Faust.     During 
some  years  of  her  earlier  life  she  went  from  time  to  time,  with 
Mary  Coleridge  and  other  companions,  to  the  house  of  the 
old  scholar-poet,  William  Cory,  to  read  Greek  authors  with 
him.1     But  in  her  writings  she  never  dealt  with,  and  rarely 
referred  to,  the    history  or  literature  of   Germany  or    of 
Greece.     Italy,  again,  certainly  filled  a  large  space  in  her 
mind  and  affections.     Her  letters  show  that  she  was  intensely 
happy  there,  and  how  truly  she  felt  and  could  render  in 
words  the  spirit  of  its  towns,  of  the  country  surrounding 
them,  and  of  the  artists  or  the  saints  to  whom  she  was  most 
drawn  ;   and  in  writing  her  last  book,  a  little  volume  on  the 
Renaissance,  she  especially  welcomed  the  chance  of  speak- 
ing something  of  her  mind  on  Leonardo,  Michael  Angelo,  and 
Raphael.2     Yet  it  remains  true  that,  for  the  purposes  of  her 
work,  her  main  studies  were  French  and  English  ;    and 
further,  that,  although  in  short  articles  she  dealt  with  various 
English  authors  (not  often  her  special  favourites),  the  sub- 
jects of  her  principal  books  were  almost  exclusively  French. 
In  the  later  eighties  her  favourite  French  authors  seem 
to  have  been  George  Sand  and  Sainte-Beuve ;   and  it  was 
partly  to  the  latter,  partly  to  her  friend,  Emily  Ritchie, 
that  she  owed  her  introduction  to  French  memoirs.     On 

1  See  Mary  Coleridge's  very  interesting  notes  of  Mr.  Cory's  remarks, 
Gathered  Leaves,  pp.  287-336.  The  authors  named  are  Xenophon,  Plato, 
and  Sophocles. 

2  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  the  last  of  these  three  was  among  the  artists 
who  attracted  her  most.  It  is  right  to  add  that  this  book  was  composed  in 
enforced  haste,  and,  though  brilliant  in  parts,  in  other  parts  and  in  respect  of 
accuracy  fails  to  reach  her  usual  level. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

the  study  of  these  she  began,  about  1890,  to  concentrate  ; 
and  this  study,  extending  its  bounds,  led  to  the  com- 
position of  her  best-known  and  most  valuable  works.  The 
first  two  volumes  of  the  series,  the  Story  of  Two  Salons 
(1895),  and  the  Household  of  the  Lafayeltes  (1897),  dealt  with 
the  era  of  the  Revolution.  From  this  she  went  back  to  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  produced  in  1901  Women  and  Men 
of  the  French  Renaissance,  in  1905  Catherine  de  Medici  and 
the  French  Reformation,  in  1907  The  Later  Years  of  Catherine 
de  Medici,  and  finally,  in  1911,  Michel  de  Montaigne.  Thus 
the  French  Renaissance  may  be  described  as  her  principal 
subject,  and  one  on  which  she  made  herself  an  authority. 
But  during  the  years  of  her  work  on  it  she  found  time  for 
the  Life  of  her  friend  Canon  Ainger  (1906),  for  the  beautiful 
memoir  of  Mary  Coleridge  which  forms  the  Introduction 
to  Gathered  Leaves  (1910),  and  also  for  a  large  number  of 
articles  on  a  great  variety  of  topics,  not  confined  to  history 
and  literature. 

Edith  Sichel  studied  the  subjects  of  her  principal  books 
with  conscientious  labour,  and  these  books  were  warmly 
praised  by  judges  competent  (as  I  am  not)  to  estimate  their 
value  as  contributions  to  French  biography  and  history. 
But  she  did  not  write  primarily  for  experts  ;  nor  again  was 
she  specially  interested  in  political  movements  and  events. 
What  chiefly  attracted  her  was  the  spirit  of  a  time  and 
country,  and  even  more  the  minds,  characters,  and  sur- 
roundings of  individuals.  Into  these  she  entered  with  an 
alert  imagination  and  almost  unfailing  zest.  She  treated 
them  with  a  degree  of  impartiality  surprising  in  a  writer 
of  such  decided  sympathies  and  antipathies.  And  she  so 
depicted  them  that  the  reader's  interest  is  caught  at  once, 
continues  to  increase,  and  is  left  unexhausted.  There  were 
several  reasons  for  this  result.  Her  own  mind  was  so 
vivacious  that  no  amount  of  research  could  diminish  its 
animation  or  retard  the  alacrity  of  its  movement.     She  was 


4  NEW  AND  OLD 

an  artist  in  selection  and  in  the  disposition  of  the  selected 
material.  And  she  wrote  fluently,  commanding  a  rich  vocabu- 
lary, and  a  style  which  was  individual  and  readily  recognised, 
but  quite  free  from  mannerism  or  traces  of  design.  These 
merits  far  outweigh  some  corresponding  defects.  She  had 
not  in  youth  the  severe  training  which  makes  for  perfect 
accuracy.  Nor  were  her  judgments  always  fully  considered. 
William  Cory  told  her  not  to  'make  such  leaps' ;  and,  though 
she  took  his  warning  to  heart,  her  eager  mind  never  ceased 
to  need  it. 

The  characteristic  qualities  visible  in  the  longer  works 
reappear  in  the  review-articles  taken  from  the  Times 
Literary  Supplement.1  Indeed,  Edith  Sichel  was  nowhere 
more  fully  and  uniformly  successful  as  a  writer  than  in  these 
articles.  Her  first  object — it  is  one  too  frequently  neglected 
by  reviewers — was  to  let  the  reader  know  what  kind  of 
matter  he  might  expect  to  find  in  the  book,  and,  if  necessary, 
from  what  point  of  view  it  is  treated  there.  As  her  interests 
were  catholic,  and  her  gift  of  seizing  quickly  and  present- 
ing vividly  the  essential  features  of  a  subject  was  remark- 
able, the  effect  on  the  reader  generally  is  that  he  not  only 
gets  this  information,  but  enjoys  reading  the  article  and 
often  wishes  to  pursue  the  subject  further,  while  he  can 
judge  from  the  critical  remarks,  usually  brief  and  decided, 
whether  he  had  better  pursue  it  in  the  book  under  review.2 
This  is  the  effect  even  when  he  can  see  from  the  article  that 
the  reviewer  herself  had  no  expert  knowledge  of  the  matter 
in  hand  (and  of  such  articles  a  few  are  included  in  the  present 
volume) ;  but  naturally  a  stronger  personal  interest  and 
a  more  lasting  value  belong  to  those  in  which  the  writer 
deals  with  her  own  subjects.  This  personal  interest  is 
heightened  in  the  case  of  the  Thoughts  and  the  Extracts  from 
Letters.     In  these  two  sections  of  the  present  volume  there 

1  The  articles  reprinted  here  form  perhaps  a  fifth  of  the  total  contributed. 
3  These  have  sometimes  been  omitted  in  the  reprint. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

appear,  more  prominently  than  elsewhere,  and  in  a  more 
distinctly  stated  form,  the  chief  ideas  and  beliefs  which 
governed  both  her  view  of  life  and  her  way  of  living  it.  The 
Letters,  which  differ  comparatively  little  in  style  from  the 
published  writings,  show  how  easily  and  naturally  she  wrote. 
They  recall  her  conversation  at  once,  and  indeed  are  so 
characteristic  that  they  give  an  almost  perfect  picture  of 
her.  The  Thoughts  were  written  down  merely  for  herself  or 
for  a  few  friends,  and,  though  there  are  good  aphorisms  among 
them,  they  were  not  essays  in  aphoristic  art.  Indeed,  the  title 
which  she  gave  to  the  little  manuscript  book  from  which  most 
of  them  are  taken,  was  not  Thoughts  but  Fool-Flashes. 

Almost,  if  not  quite,  the  first  thing  that  Edith  Sichel 
wrote  for  publication  was  Jenny,  the  story  of  a  girl  in 
Wapping,  which  appeared  in  the  Cornhill  for  December, 
1887.  In  her  earliest  book,  Worthington  Junior  (1893) — 
a  novel  which,  in  spite  of  its  merits,  did  not  point  to  a 
vocation  for  that  form  of  literature — the  most  successful 
incidents  and  characters  belonged  to  Whitechapel.  Some 
twenty  years  later  she  composed,  and  intended  to  publish, 
the  remarkable  story  Gladys  Leonora  Pratt,  printed  in  this 
volume.  In  all  these  cases  she  wrote  from  an  intimate 
knowledge  gained  in  the  East  End  ;  and,  during  the  whole 
period  of  her  literary  production,  she  was  incessantly  busy 
in  work  of  various  kinds  on  behalf  of  the  poor.  The  fact 
is  so  characteristic  of  her  that  a  brief  record  must  be  given 
of  these  practical  activities. 

They  began  when,  in  her  twenty-third  year,  she  joined  the 
Metropolitan  Association  for  Befriending  Young  Servants.1 
She  had  to  find  in  their  own  homes  the  girls  whom  she 

1  She  joined  the  Whitechapel  Branch,  and  so  came  into  contact  with  Canon 
and  Mrs.  Barnett.  The  paper  on  Saints  and  Mystics,  printed  in  this  volume, 
contains  a  reference  to  Canon  Barnett,  of  whose  inspiring  influence  she 
spoke  at  a  memorial  meeting  in  the  last  year  of  her  life. 


6  NEW  AND  OLD 

befriended,  and  also  the  mistresses,  usually  in  somewhat 
humble  life,  who  took  them  into  service,  and  from  whom 
they  often  ran  away.  Thus  she  was  led  into  what  she 
called  '  the  mad  world  '  of  Bethnal  Green,  Shoreditch,  or 
Shadwell,  '  the  world  of  raging  mistresses,  frenzied  Elizas, 
and  perturbing  Carolines.'  Her  reports  show  into  what 
noisome  quarters  of  this  world  she  sometimes  penetrated  ; 
what  courage,  persistence,  and  sound  judgment  accom- 
panied her  passionate  desire  to  help  ;  and  on  what  perfectly 
friendly  terms  this  desire  may  stand  with  an  irrepressible 
sense  of  humour.  In  spite  of  the  weakness  of  her  health 
she  pursued  this  work  with  the  utmost  fervour  until,  after 
some  years,  the  doctor's  orders  brought  it  to  an  end. 

It  ceased,  however,  only  to  be  continued  in  a  less  exacting 
shape.  Through  it  she  had  formed  her  lifelong  friendship 
with  Miss  Emily  Ritchie  ;  and  when,  in  1889,  the  two  friends 
began  to  share  a  cottage  at  Chiddingfold,  there  soon  began 
also  the  experiment  of  transplanting  into  the  country  girl- 
children  from  an  East  End  workhouse,  with  others  who  had 
no  responsible  parent.  For  such  children  she  started  at  Chid- 
dingfold a  Home,  afterwards  moved  to  Hambledon  when  the 
friends  built  their  own  cottage  there.  In  this  Home  they 
were  trained  for  domestic  situations,  which  in  due  time  were 
found  for  them,  and  in  which  her  tender  hold  on  them  was 
maintained.  A  few  years  later  she  went  on  to  set  up,  close 
by,  a  second  Home,  with  a  laundry,  for  older  girls  iin  poor 
health.  But  this  experiment  proved  less  successful  and, 
after  five  years,  was  abandoned,  while  the  children's  Home 
was  still  flourishing  when  she  died. 

Always  preferring  to  work  independently  of  committees, 
and  ready  to  give  away  half  her  income,  she  sought  for  no 
outside  help  in  these  enterprises,  which  naturally  involved 
a  great  deal  of  labour  in  the  way  of  business  as  well  as  much 
anxious  responsibility.  Yet  to  this  she  added,  soon  after 
her  own  Home  was  founded,  the  duties  of  treasurer  to 


INTRODUCTION  7 

an  admirable  Home  for  Boys  in  Islington,  kept  by  a  friend 
whose  striking  gifts  did  not  include  any  marked  capacity 
for  business.  For  twenty-two  years,  until  this  Home  was 
closed,  she  not  only  acted  as  its  treasurer,  but  exerted 
herself  indefatigably  in  maintaining  and  enlarging  the  sub- 
scriptions on  which  it  depended. 

Another  of  her  interests  was  education.  From  1893 
to  1905  she  acted  as  a  manager  of  Ashburnham  and 
Park  Walk  Schools  in  Chelsea ;  and  adding,  as  usual,  to 
her  official  duties,  she  made  personal  friends  among  the 
teachers,  herself  took  classes  (at  one  time  a  weekly  class  in 
history),  gave  parties  to  the  children ;  and  whether  she  came 
to  her  class  or  her  party,  the  head-mistress  tells  us,  she 
'  scattered  joy.' 

By  1905  she  had  become  deeply  impressed  by  the  import- 
ance of  starting  young  people,  on  leaving  school,  in  some 
employment ;  and  so  she  began  to  work  with  this  object. 
For  five  or  six  years  she  carried  on  the  work  single-handed, 
finding  for  her  proteges  training-places,  situations,  and,  in 
case  of  need,  the  money  required  for  apprenticeship  ;  with 
the  result  that,  when  her  private  enterprise  was  merged  in 
that  of  the  Chelsea  Apprenticeship  Committee,  the  names 
of  sixty  or  seventy  boys  and  girls  were  counted  in  her 
books. 

Finally,  towards  the  end  of  1911,  she  made  what  may  be 
called  a  return,  with  a  difference,  to  the  kind  of  social  work 
with  which  in  her  girlhood  she  had  begun.  Her  sister, 
Mrs.  Hopkins,  had  been  for  some  time  a  visitor  at  Holloway 
Gaol,  and  Edith  was  now  invited  by  the  chaplain  to  hold 
a  class  there  for  female  prisoners.  Once  a  fortnight,  when 
she  was  in  London,  during  these  last  years  of  her  life,  she 
held  this  class  of  young  women  and  girls.  Her  plan  was 
to  read  to  them,  or,  more  often,  to  tell  them  in  her  own 
words,  stories  taken,  it  might  be,  from  Tolstoi's  Parables 
or  the  Lives  of  the  Saints,  and  presenting  a  picture  of  truth- 


8  NEW  AND  OLD 

fulness  or  purity  or  kindness  ;  and  then,  without  attempt- 
ing to  enforce  a  moral,  she  would  ask  the  question :  '  Now, 
don't  you  think  that  nice  of  her  ?  '  or,  '  Wouldn't  you  like 
to  do  a  kind  thing  like  that  ?  '  or,  '  Wouldn't  you  like  some- 
body to  say  that  of  you  ?  '  She  had  undertaken  this  task 
with  much  diffidence,  and  nothing  that  she  had  ever  done 
tried  her  more.  But  it  was  not  her  way  to  count  the  cost 
of  love  ;  and  this,  the  most  painful  of  her  labours,  was 
among  the  most  successful.  In  it,  too,  as  in  the  others,  she 
was  not  content  to  make  a  gift  and  pass  on,  but,  so  far  as 
time  and  strength  allowed,  continued  to  follow  with  her  help 
and  guidance  those  whose  trust  or  affection  she  had  won. 

Edith  Sichei's  practical  activities  were,  naturally,  un- 
known to  the  great  majority  of  those  who  read  her  books  ; 
but  this  is  not  the  only  reason  why  they  are  recounted 
here.  The  fact  that  she  carried  them  on  side  by  side 
with  continuous  literary  work  was  very  characteristic  of 
her ;  while  her  ability  to  combine  with  apparent  ease,  and  in 
spite  of  the  weakness  of  her  health,  two  occupations  so 
different  and  usually  found  so  conflicting,  was  a  source 
of  wonder  to  her  friends.  How  it  was  that  she  was  able 
to  do  this  may  incidentally  appear  if  I  now  try  to 
recall  some  traits  of  her  character  and  of  her  way  of 
looking  at  life. 

Those  philanthropic  activities,  it  will  have  been  noticed, 
were  almost  all  concerned  with  children  or  young  people. 
Her  love  for  the  young,  her  joy  in  them,  and  her  hold  on 
them,  were  no  less  marked  in  her  private  life.  To  little 
children  she  was  a  fairy  godmother.  She  showered  gifts 
on  her  girl-relatives  and  girl-friends,  and  enjoyed  nothing 
better  than  devising  treats  and  jaunts  for  their  pleasure. 
I  have  mentioned  the  weekly  lessons  on  Faust  that  she  was 
giving  in  the  last  months  of  her  life ;  and  she  had  been 
holding  such  small  classes  in  literature  or  history  then  for 


INTRODUCTION  9 

ten  or  twelve  years.  Nor  did  she  merely  teach.  To  the 
end  she  never  lost  the  power  of  entering,  with  eager  sym- 
pathy and  on  terms  of  free  discussion,  into  that  mental 
world  of  a  new  generation  which,  to  its  predecessors,  is 
commonly  a  region  rather  surmised  than  known.  Such 
conversations  might  leave  her  amused  or  perturbed  as  well 
as  enlightened,  but  she  came  to  them  as  a  comrade  and 
fellow-seeker,  whose  experience  might  be  of  use,  but  who 
had  herself  plenty  to  learn. 

Her  older  friends — her  contemporaries  or  seniors — if  they 
read  what  has  been  said  of  her  relations  with  the  young, 
will  feel  that,  mutatis  mutandis,  it  holds  good  of  her  relations 
with  themselves.  They  will  echo  the  words  of  M.  Andre 
Beaunier,  '  Elle  avait  la  religion  de  l'amitie,'  and  may  say 
that  to  describe  her  would  be  to  describe  a  perfect  friend. 
To  do  this  is  needless,  but  a  word  of  caution  may  be  added. 
She  had  that  passion  for  giving  which  makes  giving-up  a 
pure  pleasure,  and  the  way  to  delight  her  was  to  ask  of 
her  ;  but  to  give  to  her  was  to  delight  her  too,  and  there  was 
in  her  no  trace  of  the  disagreeable  quality  sometimes  sug- 
gested by  the  words  '  self-effacing,'  '  humble,'  or  '  saintly.' 
In  discussion,  for  example,  though  she  was  not  controversial 
and  liked  companionship  in  thinking,  her  attitude  was — as 
indeed  it  was  everywhere — direct  and  sturdy.  If  she  found 
a  statement  obscure  she  said  so  ;  if  she  doubted  or  demurred 
to  it  you  knew  that  at  once  ;  if  it  touched  any  idea  that 
she  valued,  she  refused  to  leave  it  in  abeyance.  She  could 
think  and  feel  as  impersonally  as  any  man,  but  she  had 
plenty  of  personality. 

To  be  habitually  helpful,  loving,  and  a  good  friend  comes 
to  no  one  by  instinct,  but  still  a  strong  impulse  to  be  so 
lay  in  Edith  Sichel's  nature.  One  may,  perhaps,  signal 
out  three  other  marked  traits  of  her  native  disposition. 
Those  who  knew  her  well  in  her  youth  unite  in  speaking  of 
her  fervour,  and  the  ardour  with  which  she  threw  herself 


10  NEW  AND  OLD 

into  all  that  appealed  to  her.  One  of  them  applies  to  her 
Wordsworth's  line,  '  A  creature  of  a  fiery  heart '  ;  and,  even 
thirty  years  later,  it  was  impossible  to  imagine  her  lethargic 
or  tepid.  At  the  same  time  she  was  inclined  by  nature  not 
merely  to  serious  but  to  brooding  thought.  '  She  used 
to  remind  me,'  wrote  an  early  friend,  '  of  Michael  Angelo's 
Penseroso,  not  only  in  the  cast  of  her  countenance,  but  in 
the  sidelong  droop  of  the  head,  when  "  entering  on  thoughts 
abstruse."  '  She  never  lost  this  look  in  moments  of  abstrac- 
tion, and  the  resemblance  was  no  mere  fancy.  '  But,'  the 
writer  goes  on,  '  the  power  of  enjoyment  was  as  vivid,  the 
sudden  lighting  of  the  face  into  humour  or  delight  as 
striking.'  And  this  last  trait,  usually  the  most  obvious  at 
a  first  meeting  with  her,  was  far  from  being  merely  super- 
ficial. Her  temperament,  ardent  and  yet  deeply  serious, 
was  also  buoyant,  gay,  one  might  almost  add  mercurial ; 
her  expression  frequently  one  of  brilliant  animation  ;  fun 
danced  in  her  beautiful  eyes ;  her  talk  sparkled  with  wit 
and  humour,  and  she  was  never  more  typically  herself  than 
at  times  when  she  let  herself  loose  in  hilarious  nonsense 
and  extravagant  gambols  of  the  mind.  In  her  youth,  we  are 
told,  her  companions  at  such  moments  '  sat  round  her  in 
fits  of  laughter  ' ;  and  so  it  was  to  the  last.  To  reproduce 
her  talk  at  these  moments  is  impossible,  but  some  notion 
of  it  may  be  gathered  from  the  farcical  description  of 
an  Eisteddfod  in  one  of  her  letters  (Extract  5),  or 
even  from  the  following  passage  in  a  Whitechapel  report 
(the  names  are  changed,  though  the  report  is  thirty 
years  old) : 

'  Eliza  Smith. — I  went  to  her  home  and,  for  the  first  time, 
have  ceased  to  wonder  that  she  is  so  dirty.  Any  one  with 
such  pitch-black  parents  could  not  be  otherwise.  An  inkier 
couple  does  not  tread  Africa.  I  saw  Mr.  S.  for  the  first 
time.  .  .  .  The  usual  hunt  for  Eliza's  address  came  off, 
Mrs.  S.  darting  about  here  and  there,  like  an  Ethiopian 


INTRODUCTION  11 

weasel,  and  diving  into  pots  and  pans,  corners  and  tea-cups, 
from  which  she  fished  out  countless  envelopes  smothered 
in  dust — none  of  them  Eliza's.  At  last  she  gave  a  frantic 
leap  towards  the  ceiling  and  snatched  piles  of  black  papers 
from  behind  all  the  pictures  and  frames — jumping  up  and 
down  with  sudden  jerks  and  quips — and  giving  short  pants 
for  breath — looking,  for  all  the  world,  like  a  large  acrobatic 
smut.  One  longed  to  brush  her  away.  I  believe  that  she, 
Pere  Smith,  and  Eliza  are  all  made  out  of  fog,  and  that  it 
was  the  fact  of  Eliza's  being  in  a  temper  that  caused  all 
those  fogs  last  week.  She  is  going  to  leave  her  place,  as 
the  son  of  the  house  hit  her  across  the  shoulders  ;  and  I 
have  written  to  her  to  come  to  us.' 

The  report  from  which  this  extract  is  taken  is  full  of 
sordid  and  painful  facts,  and  is  laden  with  sorrow  and  pity  ; 
but  it  was  pure  gain,  both  to  the  writer  and  to  those  whom 
she  longed  to  help,  that  her  heart  and  her  sense  of  humour 
were  active  together,  and  did  not  impede  each  other ;  and 
to  this  happy  union  and  the  buoyancy  of  her  temperament 
she  doubtless  owed  in  part  her  success  in  habitually 
combining  philanthropic  with  literary  work,  and  the 
apparent  ease  with  which  she  passed  from  one  to  the 
other. 

But  there  were  much  deeper  causes  of  this  success,  and 
they  concerned  her  whole  outlook  upon  life,  her  attitude 
towards  it,  and  her  preferences  in  art  and  literature.  She 
was  not  inclined  to  any  facile  form  of  optimism,  but  still  she 
believed  in  human  nature  and  did  not  fear  it.  In  her  view 
it  contains  nothing  inherently  evil.  The  whole  stuff  of  it 
is  capable  of  being  moulded  by  sufficient  effort  into  some- 
thing fine,  and  is  the  opportunity  of  this  transforming  action. 
Hence  she  faced,  not  without  distress  but  without  dismay, 
the  evils  which  she  laboured  to  lessen  ;  and  one  might  even 
say  that  her  sympathy  was  diminished  by  nothing  that  had 
in  it  life  and  energy,  and  that,  if  she  could  have  despaired 


12  NEW  AND  OLD 

of  any  one,  it  would  not  have  been  the  sinner  but  the 
sluggard  or  the  frivolous.  I  well  remember  her  deep  anxiety 
and  unremitting  efforts  on  behalf  of  a  poor  girl  imprisoned 
for  a  violent  crime  due  to  jealousy  ;  but  the  crux  of  the 
matter  for  her  was  not  the  crime,  but  her  failure  to  make 
the  criminal  see  that  the  crime  was  bad  ;  and  when  at  last 
she  succeeded  in  this  she  was  sure  that  the  upward  way  was 
open.  As  her  writings  show,  she  was  much  attracted  by 
the  saintly  character ;  but  its  ardour,  its  love,  and  its 
happiness  were  the  sources  of  the  attraction,  and  any  mere 
asceticism  repelled  her.  Among  writers,  too,  the  rich, 
expansive,  forward-looking  natures  appealed  to  her  most. 
In  the  Women  and  Men  of  the  French  Renaissance  there  is 
an  admirable  chapter  on  Rabelais,  an  author  whom,  accord- 
ing to  Besant,  no  woman  can  read,  but,  for  her,  a  prophet 
with  a  vision  of  the  liberated  human  spirit.  It  was  this 
that  she  missed  in  Montaigne,  of  whom  she  wrote  with 
sympathy  and  insight  but  with  much  less  gusto,  and 
whom  she  calls  (in  a  letter)  a  '  mountain-hating  thinker,' 
'  Montaigne  who  understood  Monday  so  well  and  Sunday 
so  little.' 

There  was  nothing  one-sided  or  extreme  in  the  tendency 
I  am  describing,  though  it  was  occasionally  expressed  in 
terms  which  might  mislead.  For  instance,  in  the  Thoughts 
(68-72),  the  '  love  '  in  which  she  believed  is  sharply  con- 
trasted with  '  morality,'  the  laws  of  which  are  said  to  mean 
only  '  extended  fear.'  What  is  here  called  '  morality  '  is 
obviously  one  particular  kind  of  morality,  and  what  is 
contrasted  with  it  is  a  higher  and  more  adequate  kind.  Her 
preference  for  the  latter,  for  '  goodness  '  or  '  love,'  is  thor- 
oughly characteristic,  but  her  language  might  suggest  that 
she  sympathised  with  the  fashion  of  '  a-moralism,'  or  even 
that  '  love  '  meant  for  her  something  sentimental  or  some- 
thing reckless.  No  idea  could  have  less  foundation.  The 
description  of  life  as  an  adventure  appealed  to  her  strongly, 


INTRODUCTION  18 

but  the  adventure,  for  her,  was  like  that  of  Rabbi  Ren 
Ezra,  a  '  high  enterprise  '  or  '  spiritual  romance.' l  Though 
she  often  enjoyed  it  with  all  her  heart  and  believed  it  should 
be  happy,  she  never  supposed  that  the  possibilities  of  human 
nature  could  be  elicited  without  effort,  abnegation,  or  pain. 
If  she  had  been  asked  to  name  the  first  gift  she  would  choose 
to  give,  were  such  things  givcable,  to  the  young  people  whom 
she  tried  to  help,  she  would  probably  have  answered,  '  Self- 
control.'  '  Love,'  she  wrote,  '  is  the  most  austere  discipline 
of  life,  as  well  as  its  sweetest  balm.'  She  herself  was  as 
strong  as  she  was  kind.  She  delighted  to  '  scatter  joy  '  ; 
no  bound  was  set  to  her  sympathy  either  with  sorrow  or 
with  failings  ;  the  words  of  a  friend,  '  you  could  say  anything 
to  her,'  are  true  ;  but  so  are  the  words  of  another,  '  she  had 
the  uncompromising  sternness  of  love.'  Hence  she  recog- 
nised the  presence  of  love  in  shapes  that  may  seem  its 
enemies,  and  called  duty  '  love  hardened  and  extended 
beyond  the  personal  sphere.'  She  regarded  Tolstoi  with 
the  utmost  veneration,  and  much  of  his  gospel  was  a  gospel 
for  her ;  but  the  application  of  some  of  his  ideas  she 
decisively  rejected.  Punishment,  she  said,  is  not  the  oppo- 
site of  forgiveness,  it  is  '  the  reversed  torch  of  love,  and 
none  the  less  a  light  in  darkness  because  it  is  reversed  '  ; 
and,  while  private  judgment  on  the  sinner  is  wrong,  judg- 
ment of  the  sin  is  love  of  the  sinner. 

Thus  her  attitude  to  life  may  perhaps  best  be  defined  as 
one  of  glad  and  grateful  acceptance  on  condition  of  trans- 
formation. Life,  in  her  view,  brings  much  that  is  pure  and 
unsought  joy,  more  perhaps  that  needs  this  transforming 
effort,  little  or  nothing  that  cannot  be  made  to  contribute 
to  an  inward  and  abiding  happiness.  It  was  in  this  spirit 
that  she  aided  others,  and  strove  to  deal  with  her  own  life. 
For  example,  she  was  well  acquainted  with  pain,  but  she 

1  Her  own  phrases,  about  work  in  the  East  End,  in  the  memorial  speech  on 
Canon  Barnett  and  the  character  of  his  influence. 


14  NEW  AND  OLD 

neither  yielded  to  it  nor  rebelled  against  it ;  she  used  it. 
'  I  have  been  travelling,'  she  wrote  once,  '  in  my  own  father- 
land of  Pain,  which  has  its  special  prospects  and  experi- 
ences, though  the  inns  there  are  uncomfortable  and 
expensive.' x     Again,  the  law  of  our  life,  as  of  nature,  is 

change : 

Nothing  can  be  as  it  lias  been  before  ; 
Better,  so  call  it,  only  not  the  same  : 

and  this  hurts  us;  but  every  present,  as  it  comes,  has  its  unique 
good  to  offer,  and  we  should  not  only  accept  it  but  welcome  it 
with  hospitality,  and  should  give  the  same  welcome  to  that 
which  succeeds  it.2  '  I  am  glad,'  she  wrote  in  a  birthday  letter 
to  Mary  Coleridge,  '  that  you  are  getting  older,  as  I  know 
it  means  greater  happiness  for  you  than  youth  could  pos- 
sibly mean  .  .  .  and  that  is  the  greatest  compliment  one 
could  pay  to  any  human  being.'  It  is  so  because  this  in- 
crease of  happiness  implies  in  the  human  being  who  possesses 
it  that  constant  work  of  transformation.  And  this  again — 
it  is  another  main  point  in  her  faith — means  a  continuous 
growth,  in  which  the  past  lives  on,  and  which  is  as  secure 
as  anything  human  can  be  against  the  accidents  of  the  future. 
'  The  most  blessed  thing  in  it  all,'  she  wrote  in  another 
letter,  '  seems  to  me  that,  in  spite  of  outward  circumstances 
and  personal  ills  and  aches,  something  mysterious  keeps  on 
growing  inside  one,  which  makes  more  and  more  for  happi- 
ness.' This  real  '  happiness,'  which  is  sharply  contrasted 
with  mere  '  pleasure,'  and  which  frivolity  can  never  know, 
cannot  be  lost :  '  when  happiness  has  once  sat  upon  the 
hearth,  the  fire  is  always  alight '  {Thoughts,  17) ;  '  the 
comforting  thing  in  life  is  that  happiness  comes  from 
within,  not  from  without,  and  that  it  lives  apart  from 
sorrow  or  any  of  the  assaults  of  life  and  death ;  and  that, 
the  more  we  love,  the  more  it  comes  to  the  strange  rolling 

1  See  Poems,  4. 

2  See  the  opening  numbers  in  the  series  of  Thoughts. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

years.  .  .  .  Amidst  all  the  deep  floods  of  sorrow,  it  is  a 
blessed  fact  that  to  wholesome  and  unselfish  minds  life 
itself  is  holy,  and  its  real  interests  do  not  jar  with  death.' 
And  so,  as  she  undoubtingly  believed,  whatever  the  change 
called  death  may  involve,  it  cannot  mean  the  cessation  of 
this  continuous  growth  and  happiness. 

The  way  of  regarding  life  which  I  have  been  describing 
and  illustrating,  was  partly  formed  and  constantly  sus- 
tained by  meditation  and  reflection,  and  it  amounted  to  a 
belief  or  faith.  And  was  not  this,  it  may  be  asked,  also 
a  religious  belief  or  faith  ?  No  one  who  knew  Edith  Sichel 
at  all  intimately  could  hesitate  in  answering  this  question, 
and  a  single  sentence  in  one  of  her  letters  may  give  the 
answer :  '  The  immanence  of  God  and  the  life  of  Christ 
are  my  treasures.'  But  this  religious  belief  was  not  a  theo- 
logical creed.  Neither  the  native  cast  of  her  mind  nor  the 
course  of  her  studies  inclined  her  in  any  marked  degree  to 
philosophical  or  theological  theory ;  and  the  value  of  her 
faith  does  not  lie  in  the  systematic  connection  or  complete- 
ness of  her  ideas.  Theories,  moral,  theological,  or  aesthetic, 
are  frequently  of  small  account  because  their  authors, 
with  an  unusual  gift  for  analysis  or  system,  have  only  an 
average  personal  experience  of  the  matter  they  attempt  to 
theorise.  Hers  was  the  opposite  case.  Her  religious  faith, 
her  ways  of  looking  at  life  and  art  and  literature,  her  atti- 
tude to  the  human  beings  whom  she  saw  with  her  eyes  or 
imagined  from  the  record  left  of  them,  sprang  directly  from 
her  experience,  and  were  in  turn  tested  by  it.  This  experi- 
ence, whether  grave  or  gay,  was  exceptionally  vivid  and 
whole-hearted  ;  while  the  variety  of  her  own  nature  and 
interests,  the  number  of  her  friends  and  proteges,  and  her 
wonderful  power  of  imaginative  and  practical  sympathy, 
gave  it  also  an  unusual  width.  And,  since  it  was  both 
truly  and  happily  expressed  in  what  she  wrote,  the  follow- 
ing pages  will  show  her  to  strangers  infinitely  better  than 


16  NEW  AND  OLD 

any  words  of  mine,  and  to  others  will  recall  at  every  turn 
hours  and  days  and  years  radiant  with  the  light  of  her 
wit  and  laughter,  and  glowing  with  the  warmth  of  her 
generous  and  loving  heart. 

A.  C.  Bradley. 


NEW    AND    OLD 


B 


EXTRACTS   FROM   LETTERS1 


£  often  think,  when  I  am  wandering  through  the  picturesque 
mire  of  Wapping,  that  there  would  be  far  more  essential 
good  in  the  work  if  the  picturesqueness  were  taken  away ; 
if  the  poor  were  quite  respectable  though  just  as  needy, 
the  streets  clean,  the  hovels  houses.  Picturesqueness — 
moral,  mental,  and  outward — lends  a  glamour  which  detracts 
from  the  disinterestedness  of  one's  work.  I  always  feel 
wholesomely  humiliated  in  the  East-end  by  the  fact  of  the 
people  I  see  being  much  better  than  me  ;  they  rise  so  much 
higher  above  their  circumstances  than  I  do  over  mine,  and 
ought  to  be  visiting  me  ! 

If  one  could  only  implant  in  them  the  idea  of  loving 
fellowship  among  themselves,  which,  after  all,  is  Christianity  ; 
if  one  could  teach  them  through  the  human  to  reach  the 
Divine !     (1885.) 

2 

Talking  of  beams  reminds  me  that  I  have  lost  my  heart 
...  to  Shrewsbury.  Twice  during  my  migrations  I  have 
had  to  wait  for  my  train  there,  and  have  employed  these 
spare  hours,  like  a  good  busy  little  girl,  by  getting  on  hand- 
shaking terms  with  Shrewsbuiy.  It  suits  me  perfectly,  and 
presently,  when  Shadwell  has  been  reduced  to  a  Belgravian 

1  [With  a  few  exceptions  the  following  extracts  are  arranged  in  chrono- 
logical order,  an  arrangement  which  has  a  biographical  value,  though  it  pro- 
duces some  sharp  contrasts  in  subject  and  tone.  They  have  been  chosen 
mainly  to  illustrate  characteristics  of  the  writer,  and  in  particular  some 
which  do  not  fully  appear  in  the  reprinted  papers,  or  are  barely  mentioned  in 
the  Introduction  ;  for  example,  the  delight  in  natural  beauty  and  in  works  of 
art,  which  was  obvious  even  on  a  slight  acquaintance  with  her. 

19 


20  NEW  AND  OLD 

stolidity  and  Whitechapel  to  a  Mayfair  monotony,  I  shall 
migrate  there.  What  a  dear  ramshackle  old  place  it  is, 
with  harum-scarum  houses  and  ill-regulated  shops  and  streets 
running  no  man  knows  why,  for  some  lead  nowhere  at  all. 
And  the  oddest  houses,  black  and  white  and  lattice-windowed, 
jump  out  upon  you  where  you  expect  them  least.  And  the 
streets  are  called  '  Mardol '  and  '  Dog  pole '  and  '  Butcher's 
Row '  and  '  Pride  Hill.'  The  cakes  were  made  in  Eden, 
and  the  market  is  full  of  real,  live,  farmers'  daughters, 
selling  real  golden  butter  and  ruddy  plums.  .  .  . 

Here  I  still  pasture  a  la  sheep  and  return  to  my  muttons 
daily.  Do  you  find  that  one's  feeling  to  Nature  changes 
with  advancing  years  ?  I  used  to  believe  in  your  l  great 
progenitor's 

O  Lady,  we  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  iut  our  life  alone  does  Nature  live. 

But  now  I  don't  any  longer.  The  great  Mother  of  us  all  has 
a  holy  charm  to  soothe  me  which  nobody  else  has.  If  we 
come  to  her  determined  to  make  her  into  a  Proteus  who 
changes  form  with  every  one  of  our  passions,  our  thoughts, 
our  feelings,  she  will  act  like  a  wise  mother,  and  teach  us 
our  folly  by  complying  with  our  request.  But  if  we  come 
to  her  like  wayward  children  as  we  are,  and  lie  down  in  her 
lap  and  let  her  do  as  she  will  with  us,  surely  she  will  hush 
us  to  rest  almost  like  rest  eternal,  and  to  the  peace  which 
passeth  all  understanding.     (1885.) 

3 

[Report  of  Whitechapel  Girls] 

Harriet  Webb 

Oh,  what  a  black  and  tangled  web  we  weave 
When  first  with  Webb  we  practise  to  deceive, 
And  fondly  dream  we  may  reclaim  her  youth 
And  tame  her — savage,  smutty  and  uncouth, 


1  [The  letter  was  addressed  to  Mary  Coleridge.] 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  21 

With  surly  visage  dyed  by  ebon  soot, 

And  voice  deep-buried  in  her  left-band  boot ; 

Then  flee  from  hope,  nor  yet  to  learn  refuse 

That  Guardian-angels  aren't  the  slightest  use. 

And  this  is  all  the  cheer  we  dare  rehearse, 

That,  though  she  can't  improve,  she  can't  be  worse. 

Poor  thing  !  her  mistress  is  really  an  angel  to  keep  her. 
She  told  me  wonderful  legends  of  how  Harriet  rails  at  her 
if  she  stops  out,  and  opens  the  door  on  her  return  with  *  It 's 
me  'as  'ad  the  pleasure,  isn't  it  now  ?  '  and  how  she  rushes 
into  the  work-room  and  makes  all  the  '  young  ladies  '  cry 
by  her  winged  words,  and  how  she  '  makes  herself  so  familiar 
with  all  the  visitors  that  they  run  away  from  the  house,' 
especially  one  whom  she  described  coyly  as  '  a  superior 
visitor — a  gentleman  from  Northampton,'  who  appears  to 
have  been  so  alarmed  by  Harriet's  noises  after  his  depar- 
ture that  he  returned  to  look  at  her  with  alarm  over  the 
window-blind. 

I  am  really  sorry  for  the  mistress.  She  is  a  pathetic 
instance  of  lonely  woman  in  reduced  circumstances,  still 
clinging  to  the  pathetic  rags  of  polysyllabic  gentility,  salts 
her  sentences  with  'nevertheless,'  shows  a  patrician  contempt 
for  '  no,'  and  says  '  nay '  instead.  Her  boarding-school 
smile  is  a  matter  for  tears.  She  is  very  brave,  too,  for  a 
sempstress's  life  is  a  hard  one,  and  she  is  rudely  treated  by 
her  employers.  That  seems  to  me  a  tragedy,  the  struggle 
for  bread  of  people  who  have  only  been  brought  up  on 
callisthenics  and  painting  on  china,  and  surely  they  need 
visiting  more  than  the  girls.     (1886.) 


The  Sandown  races  were  the  first  I  had  ever  seen,  and  it 
was  like  reading  six  pages  of  Tolstoi — or  rather  vice  versa — 
though  not  so  exciting.  Still  it  was  very  wonderful — the 
rush  and  the  light  and  the  colour  of  it,  the  rainbow  jockeys 


22  NEW  AND  OLD 

on  their  glossy-coated  steeds  straight  out  of  the  Arabian 
Nights,  pawing,  arching  their  royal  necks,  flying  across  the 
smooth-shaven  turf.  And  the  breathless  pause  before  the 
winner  outstrips  his  comrades  !  And  then  the  people — so 
different  from  one's  everyday  experience — overstrung  old 
gentlemen  with  vicious  waistcoats  ;  burly  old  ladies  with 
very  golden  hair ;  queer  young  ladies  with  hats  as  high 
as  their  manners  ;  octogenarian  Adonises  with  sly,  bald 
faces,  who  looked  as  if  they  had  been  born  and  bred  in 
Bond  Street  at  five  o'clock  of  a  June  afternoon ;  and 
hundreds  of  walking  chessboards  with  voices  as  loud  as 
their  checks  and  hats  on  one  side  (why  do  horsey  people 
always  wear  their  hats  on  one  side  ?  I  can  get  no  one  to 
solve  this  mystery  for  me).  What  a  good  thing  it  is  for 
one  to  see  a  wholly  different  side  of  life  from  that  which  one 
is  accustomed  to — even  if  it  only  teaches  one  that  there  are 
things  wholly  out  of  one's  own  taste  and  experience,  in 
which  people  take  an  absorbing  interest.  .  .  .  All  the  same, 
and  priggishness  apart,  the  way  races  take  place  (not  the 
races  themselves,  nor  the  bare  fact  of  seeing  them)  is  quite 
out  of  keeping  with  Christianity.  Straight  upon  the  hideous 
din  of  the  betting,  and  the  visible  fact  that  thousands  are 
spent  on  the  mere  keeping  of  horses,  came  poor  starving- 
Mrs.  Payne's  plaintive,  '  Yes,  Miss,  I  know  the  rich  'ave 
their  troubles — they  trouble  about  the  poor  ' ;  and  one 
knew  that  the  turning  of  the  Temple  into  a  den  of  thieves 
was  by  no  means  a  story  of  the  past  alone.     (1886.) 

5 

To-day  was  the  last  and  the  least  good  day  of  the  Eisteddfod. 
It  has  been  very  fine — a  glorious  performance  of  the  Elijah, 
and  a  Bach  Chorus  which  was  sublime.  The  Gladstone 
day  was  unparalleled  ;  they  took  £1100  that  one  day  instead 
of  the  usual  £300.  As  he  was  going  into  the  Pavilion  a 
poor  old  woman  threw  a  parcel  at  him,  which  he  caught 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  23 

anxiously,  not  seeing  the  donor  and  imagining  it  was  some 
missive  of  importance.  On  opening  it  he  found  that  it  was 
a  red  handkerchief  for  him  to  tie  round  his  head  in  case  of 
a  draught ;  the  ardent  old  dame  thought  this  the  most 
acceptable  guise  in  which  to  express  her  Liberalism. 

My  general  idea  of  the  Eisteddfod  to-day,  when  we  got 
inside  the  tent,  was  that  of  a  large  show  of  old  men  :  every 
kind  of  old  man  in  Wales — lean  old  men  with  coal-black 
eyes,  fat  old  men  with  crumpled  cuffs,  middling  old  men 
with  insignificant  gestures,  poetical  old  men  with  half- 
open  mouths,  discreet  old  men  with  tight-shut  lips,  business- 
like old  men,  polite  old  men  and  rude  old  men.  They  were 
all  herded  on  a  rough  wooden  platform  with  a  background 
of  red  cloth. 

I  subsequently  discovered  that  they  were  all  '  Bards.' 
Every  Bard  is  apparently  subject  to  two  conditions  :  he 
must  abjure  soap  eternally,  and  light  an  undying  fire  in  his 
black,  black  eye. 

The  central  figure  to-day  was  a  hugely  stout  gentleman 
with  a  Beethovenish  head,  long  grey  hair  anointed  with 
priestly  oil  which  ran  over  to  his  coat  in  the  absence  of  a 
beard,  on  to  which,  scripturally  speaking,  it  ought  to  have 
fallen.  He  had  an  air  of  cheap  but  ineffable  Mystery  about 
him,  and  of  a  secret  in  his  Eye  (which  can  only  be  spelt  with 
a  capital  to  give  the  faintest  idea  of  its  power).  His  nom 
de  plume  was  Huffa  Mone  (which  his  real  name  was  Williams, 
but  every  Bard  has  a  nom  de  plume),  and  he  was  the  Chief 
Bard  of  Anglesea. 

There  was  also  present  the  oldest  Bard  on  record,  with  a 
snow-white  beard  ten  miles  long  like  a  nursery-rhyme,  who 
made  a  speech  (also  ten  miles  long)  in  a  weak  pipey  inaudible 
voice,  and  who  was  deafeningly  applauded  for  his  age  and 
for  his  inaudible  words.  Both  he  and  the  Bard  of  Anglesea 
presented  broad  coat-fronts  smothered  in  old  Eisteddfod 
medals  and  blue  ribbons. 


24  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  Bards  were  complimented  by  a  good  many  dusky 
prelates— the  Revd.  LLBGWST-Hueffdwx,  Canon  Plllmn 
Teddy,  and  others  of  like  names.  They  were  all  cracking 
wonderful  consonantine  jokes  and  guttural  quips  with  the 
Bards.  A  few  Shropshire  curates  in  low  hats  represented 
England  in  the  audience. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  Eisteddfod  seemed  to  me  to  consist 
in  a  succession  of  things  like  this  : — as  I  said,  to  begin  with, 
an  Old  Man  Show — swarms  of  hale  old  gentlemen  clinging 
together :  deafening  applause  from  the  audience :  the 
smallest  old  gentleman  leaps  up  without  any  warning, 
roars  out  a  dozen  consonants  in  a  gigantic  voice,  and  throws 
himself  passionately  on  the  neck  of  the  largest  old  gentleman : 
they  embrace :  they  weep :  the  Welsh  prelates  snort  and  sniffle 
some  gutturals  :  the  old  men  bow  proudly  to  the  audience : 
the  audience  rises  and  screams  :  the  old  gentlemen  retire 
arm-in-arm  blinded  with  tears  ;  and  a  brass-band  strikes 
up  a  tune  quite  enough  to  finish  them  off  in  their  infirm 
and  highly  nervous  condition.  Then  a  nimble  gentleman 
leaps  down  from  the  platform,  seizes  a  coy  lady  from  the 
audience,  leads  her  on  to  the  platform,  drags  the  two  old 
men  back  from  their  retirement,  and  lays  their  hands  on 
her  kid  glove  ;  they  kneel ;  other  old  gentlemen  stand 
round  her,  like  post-Raphaelite  angels,  with  their  coat- 
tails  for  wings  outspread  ;  she  wags  her  purple  bonnet  over 
the  kneeling  ones  ;  a  cheap  brass-trumpet  is  blown  over 
both,  and  she  alternately  crowns  their  heads  and  pins 
green  favours  in  their  button-holes.  Then  you  find  that 
there  have  been  competitions  and  that  these  prone  octogen- 
arians are  the  winners,  the  preux  chevaliers  of  this  Land  of 
Frumps.  The  provincial  Rowenas  and  Clotildas  in  slate- 
coloured  flounces,  from  whom  they  receive  their  guerdon, 
approach  this  greatest  occasion  in  their  lives  as  a  High  and 
Holy  Festival.  The  trumpet  is  supposed  to  increase  the 
impression  of  a  joust. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS       25 

Oh  what  would  you  have  said  if  you  had  seen  me  on  my 
bench  suddenly  pounced  upon,  dragged  on  to  the  platform 
on  the  arm  of  a  Welshman  with  an  order  in  his  button-hole, 
and  led  forward  before  the  crowded  Hall  ?  If  you  had 
beheld  me  first  bowing  and  smirking  and  pinning  a  red, 
white,  and  blue  rosette  on  to  the  coat  of  a  Cymric  divine — 
then  clasping  his  hand  and  murmuring  low  intense  con- 
gratulations in  his  down-bent  ear  ?  (Though  why  I  pinned 
that  favour  on  or  congratulated  him,  or  what  I  said  or  what 
he  said,  I  shall  never  know  till  the  end  of  the  chapter,  and 
I  'm  certain  he  won't  either.)  I  only  know  that  he  made 
a  long  speech  in  Welsh  at  which  everybody  roared,  and  that 
I  retired,  again  on  the  arm  of  Citoyen  Taffy,  and  that  it  was 
terribly  formidable  to  be  watched  by  an  audience  of  at  least 
a  thousand,  especially  with  a  disrespectful  little  sister  in  fits 
of  laughter  just  below.     (1888.) 

6 

I  have  plunged  into  Borrow — you  would  adore  him.  His 
first  picture  of  the  Gipsies  in  Lavengro  sticks  to  one  and, 
like  all  racy  great  things,  appeals  to  all  ages  and  tastes. 
Such  a  curious  combination  of  magic  and  reality,  dream 
and  adventure  !  One  feels  all  at  the  same  time  like  a  child 
and  like  an  old  man  in  reading  him.  ...  I  can't  conceive 
what  a  spell  is  in  the  man,  and  how  it  is  that  he  holds 
you  breathless  over  rat-catching,  '  bruisers  '  and  philology. 
The  Romany  part  and  the  Thief  part  and  the  Tramp  part, 
etc.,  speak  for  themselves,  and  so  does  the  authorship  part. 
He  makes  the  commonplace  uncommon  and  the  uncommon 
commonplace  in  the  most  extraordinary  way.     (1889.) 


To-day  the  banks  on  the  Witley  Road  are  glowing  with 
amethystine  heather  dripping  with  raindrops  ;    the  corn- 


26  NEW  AND  OLD 

fields  are  turning  gold,  and  shine  out  in  glistening  strips  as 
far  as  one  can  see  amongst  the  green  meadows  and  patches 
of  purple  soil  and  russet  field,  so  that  from  the  distance  the 
land  looks  like  Dame  Earth's  regalia,  brimming  over  with 
jewels  and  guarded  by  the  opal  wings  of  Seraphim — at 
any  rate  that  is  what  the  clouds  look  like  to-day — iridescent 
and  watery.  Everything  is  much  deeper  in  colour  than 
when  you  and  I  took  the  walk  together  which  I  have  just 
been. 

I  felt  exceedingly  contemplative,  and  thought  how  the 
leaves  and  the  fields  had  changed  and  how  nothing  can 
remain  the  same  by  an  immovable  law,  and  remembered 
Browning's 

Nothing  can  be  as  it  has  been  before  ; 

Better,  so  call  it,  only  not  the  same. 
To  draw  one  beauty  into  our  heart's  core, 

And  keep  it  changeless  !  such  our  claim  ; 
So  answered, — Never  more  ! 

And  I  thought,  too,  how  the  comfort  and  strength,  as 
well  as  the  sorrow  of  life,  lies  in  this,  and  how  thanks  are 
most  of  all  due  to  God  for  such  a  lav/,  which  may  make  one 
year  full  of  grief  and  labour  but  the  next  full  of  soothing 
and  rest ;  which  creates  our  very  weakness  that  it  may  grow 
into  strength  ;  which  changes  our  relations  and  positions 
in  life,  that  our  souls  and  sympathies  may  widen  and  that 
we  may  not  stick  always  in  the  same  form  in  the  Big  School ; 
which  takes  away  the  crushingness  of  grief  and  the  sore- 
ness, and  makes  it  the  holiest  place  in  life  ;  which  takes 
away  pure  lives  that  they  may  remain  more  steadfastly, 
and  that  love  may  grow  the  stronger  for  their  absence.  .  .  . 
I  think  one  grasps  more  and  more  that  it  is  the  sweetness 
of  a  life  which  lives  on  and  is  strong,  and  has  power  over 
others. 

George  Sand's  sunset  certainly  borders  on  sunrise,  and, 
as  she  grows  old,  her  judgement  gains  more  of  the  Prome- 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  27 

thcan  fire.  She  and  Mrs.  Kemble  surely  have  the  same 
flaming  judgement  ?  It  seems  as  if  by  strength  of  passion 
for  life  (no  longer  for  living)  and  its  problems  she  pierced 
through  them  and  saw  beyond  the  veil,  because  she  could 
use  both  heart  and  head  and  therefore  had  Fire,  which  is 
both  light  and  warmth. 

And  as  old  Age,  in  which  the  passion  of  love,  as  it  is 
usually  understood,  has  no  place,  gradually  came  upon 
her,  it  seems  as  if  she  were  left  to  us  in  all  the  dignity  of 
her  one  pure  passion,  glorious  in  tenderness,  her  heart 
purified  and  facing  the  truth.  ...  I  suppose  people  are 
never  truly  adorable  till  they  are  patient,  and  they  are 
never  truly  patient  till  they  are  old,  great  and  generous. 
(1889.) 

8 

Such  an  Easter — the  whole  earth  rising  again  into  a  miracle 
of  hope  and  the  promise  of  fuller  life  to  come  ! 

A  sweet  little  Service,  with  the  usual  Easter  combined 
smell  of  primroses,  mackintosh  and  school-children  (which 
I  heard  denned  lately  as  '  l'odeur  du  bon  Chretien  '),  and 
the  sea  outside  to  lead  the  choir.  One  is  filled  with  ardour 
here  by  the  great  Easter-tide  going  on  outside  the  four 
Church  walls,  with  the  pulpit  where  a  joyless  Curate  prates 
of  Easter  Joy  with  limpest  lips  ;  the  Easter  of  Nature  and 
the  truth  behind  it  all — the  '  Sterben  und  Werden  '  which 
is  the  law  of  all  being,  human  as  well  as  that  of  woods  and 
meadows  ;  the  unceasing  Resurrection  of  the  Dead  that 
goes  on  in  the  midst  of  life. 

The  old  order  changeth,  yielding-  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways, 

seems  the  best  Easter  text.  .  .  .  The  most  blessed  thing 
in  it  all  seems  to  me  that,  in  spite  of  outward  circumstances 
and  personal  ills  and  aches,  something  mysterious  keeps 


28  NEW  AND  OLD 

on  growing  inside  one  which  makes  more  and  more  for 
happiness.  Even  though  one  loses  grasp  of  it  for  a  time, 
one  gains  a  more  sustained  belief  in  the  morning,  and  a 
hope  which  may  not  be  so  impetuous  as  at  the  spring  of 
life,  but  will  endure  more  surely  since  it  has  faced  experi- 
ence. It  is  curious  how  Faith  grows  unseen  and  by  no 
observable  process — certainly  by  no  actual  reasonings 
(often  in  spite  of  them) — but  by  living  and  feeling  and, 
above  all,  by  waiting  in  silence.  It  sometimes  seems  as 
if  waiting  perfectly  were  the  real  science  of  life,  and  patience 
the  highest  secret  of  the  soul,  and  that  if  we  do  not  interrupt 
God's  order  by  irreverent  fretful  impatience  we  shall  perhaps 
'  see  partly,'  and  find  and  fulfil  the  true  meaning  of  our 
lives,  instead  of  forestalling  it  wrongly  and  turning  our- 
selves into  futilities. 

I  have  a  fancy  for  reading  George  Sand  just  now  (this 
time  last  year  I  was  deep  in  Vol.  iv.  of  VHistoire  de  ma  Vie) 
and  find  her  as  bracing  as  ever.  She  writes  to  Prince 
Napoleon  :  '  Soyez  done  heureux  puisque  le  bonheur  est  une 
conquete. — Les  jours  de  degout  et  de  la  fatigue  reviennent, 
le  bonheur  a  l'etat  de  realite  complete  n'est  pas  une  chose 
permanente,  mais  la  morale  est  qu'il  faut  combattre  toujours 
pour  augmenter  votre  tresor  de  force  et  de  foi.'  Is  not  that 
a  Baptism  of  fire  ?  I  came  upon  it  just  after  I  had  been 
writing  that  rigmarole  last  night,  which  was  curious.     (1889.) 


9 

Lucca,  Easter  Sunday. 

I  have  been  thinking  of  you  so  much  ever  since  I  touched 
the  soil  and  consommes  of  France  ;  and  at  Nervi,  which 
reminded  me  so  much  of  Cannes,  it  was  all  I  could  do  to 
refrain  from  running  upstairs  to  fetch  you  for  a  walk.  And 
now  here  we  are  in  this  most  mediaeval  of  all  places — 
ducal    palaces,    mullioned    windows,    Lombard    churches, 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  29 

Basilican  churches,  open  shops  and  narrow  winding  streets 
whose  houses  nearly  meet — all  set  in  a  framework  of  old 
red  walls  and  violet  hills,  fold  upon  fold.  So  mediaeval  is 
it  that  yesterday  evening,  in  our  first  walk  to  the  Duomo, 
when  the  city  was  wrapped  in  mysterious  twilight,  not  only 
did  we  see  an  old  couple  in  deep  mourning  kneeling  in 
fervent  prayer  on  the  stone  outside  the  Cathedral  door  (I 
am  almost  sure  they  were  murderers  in  mourning  for  the 
murdered),  but  also  we  actually  beheld  a  gleamingly  hand- 
some Italian  in  a  dissembling  cloak  climb  up  to  a  mullioned 
window,  look  in  passionately,  and  descend.  We  imagined 
he  was  looking  to  see  whether  his  love  was  alone,  but  it 
is  probable  he  was  only  spying  whether  there  was  veal  or 
beef  for  dinner  :  the  Italian's  look  for  love  and  veal,  I  have 
long  since  discovered,  is  one  and  the  same.  But  this  is  a 
digression,  and  the  fact  is  I  don't  feel  I  can  describe  the 
indescribable  :  the  only  adequate  thing  to  do  would  be 
to  send  you  one  of  the  enchanting  glimpses  we  get  at  every 
turn  through  a  crumbling  archway — a  glimpse  of  garden 
and  russet  wall — of  a  mist  of  pink  peach-blossom,  bare  fig- 
trees,  and  the  glossy  leaves  and  pale  fruit  of  the  lemon- 
groves.  Or  I  should  like  to  forward  you  a  whole  long  narrow 
street  of  girls  and  women  in  scarlet  and  gold  and  faded 
green,  with  bright  kerchiefs  on  their  heads,  as  they  walk 
along,  dragging  rainbow  babies  by  the  hand,  or  stand  in 
groups  round  the  splashing  fountains  gossiping,  their  copper 
jugs  in  their  hands. 

As  for  the  Campo  Santo,  I  will  not  bore  you  with  its 
wonders  or  the  sculpture  of  Nicolo  Pisano,  all  of  which 
doubtless  you  know.  Pisa  impressed  me  sadly  as  a  town. 
It  seemed  a  dead  city,  with  this  one  live  secret  of  Art  throb- 
bing deep  in  its  soul,  like  a  faded  woman  who  has  once  been 
beautiful,  now  only  kept  alive  by  a  passionate  hidden 
thought.  I  am  writing  utter  nonsense,  but  the  combina- 
tion of  cathedrals  and  risotto  makes  me  high-flown.    (1891.) 


30  NEW  AND  OLD 

10 

Rome. 

Oh,  it  is  difficult  to  write  here  !  When  one  isn't  possessed 
one  is  resting,  and  when  one  isn't  resting  one  is  thinking, 
and  when  one  isn't  thinking  one  is  sleeping. 

What  a  region  it  is — this  Caesar- world,  one  with  this 
Nature-world,  and  then  this  Art-world  !  I  feel  as  if  I 
had  been  confirmed  by  Apollo  on  the  steps  of  the  world — 
There  ! 

You  can't  imagine  the  ineffable  beauty  of  the  Caesars' 
Palace,  and  its  ineffable  pathos — the  blackbirds  singing 
their  hearts  out  in  the  empty  halls  carpeted  with  young 
grass  ! 

I  can't  write  about  the  statues  ;  of  the  immortal  white 
world  in  the  Vatican  and  the  Capitol  I  shall  love  to  tell  you. 
You  can't  think  how  Cory-like  the  room  of  Philosophers' 
Busts  made  me  feel.  It  was  like  shaking  hands — no,  not 
hands  but  souls,  with  them.  ...  I  am  happy,  and  getting 
quite  well.     (1891.) 

11 

Rome. 

You  certainly  ought  to  be  here  in  this  place  without  a 
beginning  or  an  end,  without  anything  but  a  silent,  speak- 
ing eternity,  peopled  by  still  white  citizens,  instinct  with 
an  inexpressible  kind  of  life  beyond  life — the  ineffable 
enchantment  of  marble.  It  is  the  world  of  sculpture  here 
which  seizes  me  most,  I  think — always  excepting  the  world 
of  nature ;  but  that  belongs  to  the  city  and  includes  it, 
as  one  includes  a  person's  atmosphere  in  speaking  of  his 
existence. 

Every  Titan  wall  of  russet-brown  is  seen  through  a  mist 
of  pink  peach-blossom ;  every  jagged  archway  is  a  frame 
for  violet  hills  and  Judas- trees  in  ardent  full  blossom  ;  the 
sheep-skinned  shepherd-boys  drive  their  flocks  that  wander 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  31 

in  and  out  between  the  broken  columns  and  grass-grown 
tombs  on  the  Appian  Way,  nibbling  the  violets  without 
any  respect  of  persons.  To  a  sheep  the  dust  of  a  Mr. 
Jones  is  the  same  as  that  of  Csecilia  Metella.  And  so  to  me 
the  mighty  walls  and  sculptured  arches  and  the  giant 
battle-field  of  a  Forum  are  part  and  parcel  of  the  nature  of 
Rome  and  of  her  very  essence — if  you  come  to  ask  me  about 
them  from  their  historical  side  I  should  say  it  is  the  Art 
world  which  possesses  me  most  here. 

You  ask  me  for  one  description  of  a  statue,  but,  as  I 
can't  put  them  into  prose,  I  will  send  you  the  one  I  have 
put  into  verse.  Ilaria  Caretta,  in  the  Cathedral  at  Lucca, 
is  like  a  Browning  poem  cut  in  white  marble — a  very  young 
woman,  heavenlily  lovely  and  serene  in  the  sleep  of  death 
— all  rest  and  no  pain. 

Death  and  the  Sculptor  hoth  a  lady  loved  : 
Death  and  the  Sculptor  wrestled  hand  to  hand  : 
The  Sculptor  conquered  Death,  as  it  behoved, 
Since  Art  holds  Life  and  Death  at  her  command. 
Death  took  the  lady,  hut  the  Sculptor  kept 
The  beauty  and  the  blossom  of  her  youth, 
And  gave  her  back  to  men  as  if  she  slept, 
A  marble  mystery  of  peace  and  truth. 
Thou  still  white  woman,  sleeping  evermore, 
Eternity  of  silence  and  of  grace  ! 
Time  spell-bound  stands  afar,  and  we  before 
Such  rest  would  kneel  as  in  a  holy  place, 
Thankful  thy  sleep  can  never  finish,  or 
Life  bring  a  shadow  to  that  perfect  face. 

(1891.) 

12 

Siena,  May  1891. 

Since  Rome  1  seem  to  have  lived  a  lifetime  of  beauty — of 
lights  and  shadows,  of  golden  suns  and  white  moons  turning 
the  olive-trees  to  silver  as  they  bend  and  sway  to  each  other, 
half  angelic  and  half  courtly,  for  all  the  world  like  Perugino's 
Seraphs.     The  sight  I  almost  like  the  best  is  that  of  the 


32  NEW  AND  OLD 

Madonna-faced  women  here,  gay-skirted,  with  figures  of 
such  gracious  curves,  who  watch  their  flocks  in  the  fields 
and  work  the  while  at  their  distaffs  (real  old  fairy-tale 
distaffs),  or  stand  up  to  their  waists  in  the  bright  green 
barley,  or  walk  in  company  of  their  fierce,  sunny  husbands 
behind  the  carts  drawn  by  great  white  oxen,  bom  for 
mythological  characters  to  sit  on. 

One  of  the  things  I  enjoyed  most  was  going  to  Assisi 
and  moving  about  where  St.  Francis  actually  did  tread. 
What  those  Churches  of  Assisi  are  you  can't  think.  You 
seem  to  have  entered  a  solemn  rainbow,  and  then  discover 
that  every  crannied  wall,  arch,  apse,  roof  is  smothered  in 
frescoes,  three-quarters  of  them  Giotto  at  his  very  best. 
I  can  only  say  that  it  is  more  like  Dante  in  colour  than 
anything  else  :  the  same  dewy  childhood  of  mind,  the  same 
manly  power — almost  grim, — the  same  godly  courage,  the 
same  severity  of  judgement  and  sober  truth, — not  quite 
the  same  might  of  horror. 

St.  Francis  wedding  Poverty  is  perhaps  the  most  wonder- 
ful— the  bride  is  so  grim,  and  yet  so  pure  that  she  becomes 
beautiful,  with  a  purely  spiritual  beauty.  Her  face  and 
figure  are  quite  white ;  the  bridegroom's  clothes  are  grey- 
black  ;  and  all  about  them  is  the  crowd  of  citizens  and 
nobles,  in  their  coifs  and  birettas  and  Chaucer  head- 
dresses, whom  Browning  alone  knew  intimately.  In  one 
comer,  robed  in  lilac-grey,  is  a  figure  like  Dante,  beautiful, 
uncompromising  and  full  of  religion. 

One  does  so  strongly  realise  here,  in  the  fiery  Baptisms 
of  Art  one  is  having,  that  religion  is  born  only  of  simplicity 
and  depends  on  it,  and  that,  whatever  these  people  believed, 
they  were  bound  to  be  religious  because  they  were  as  simple 
as  babes.  I  feel  that  Giotto  is  the  one  who,  above  all, 
through  his  mastery  managed  to  convey  soul  as  foremost, 
together  with  beauty  of  body  and  without  any  rudeness. 
Cimabue,  and  the  early  masters  here  at  Siena,  are  sublime 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  33 

in  their  pathos,  because  they  have  no  body  or  (at  best  in  a 
Cimabue)  a  body  of  glorious  rudeness,  and  so  they  express 
nothing  but  soul  piercing  through  the  crude  lines.  But  it 
seems  to  me  infinitely  greater  to  possess  the  power  of  beauty 
and  yet  to  make  soul  the  foremost  impression.  And,  to 
my  ignorant  mind,  that  is  Giotto's  crown  of  masterdom. 
Giotto  must  have  believed  ardently  in  dogma  as  well  as 
spirit,  and  that  dogma  in  painting  is  a  divine  sensation. 
One  can  only  return  to  '  just  like  Dante.' 

13 

Renan  is  at  present  employing — I  can't  say  absorbing — 
my  mind.  After  reading  Martineau  it  is  like  chewing  rose- 
leaves  when  one  has  been  eating  daily  bread,  however 
heavily  baked.  I  like  his  history,  but  his  joie  and  charme 
bother  me,  and  there  is — from  whatever  point  of  view 
Christ  be  taken — a  kind  of  golden  blasphemy  about  his 
yachting  parties  on  the  Lake  of  Galilee  and  '  courses  '  among 
the  mountains.  He  cooks  French  dishes  out  of  divine 
truths,  and  makes  the  disciples  on  their  apostolic  mission 
into  a  species  of  French  excursionist ! 

But  he  gives  one  infinite  amusement  and  much  interest, 
so  one  ought  not  to  grumble, — only  I  wish  he  didn't  un- 
simplify  and  un-sublimify  things  so  much.     (1891./ 

14 

I  am  truly  thankful  to  have  seen  Mrs.  Colman.1  One  cer- 
tainly can  say  of  her  that  '  Life  is  perfected  in  Death,' 
though  one  would  rather  say  something  simpler.  Specu- 
lation seems  more  than  ever  vain  after  a  sight  like  that  of 
her  faith  and  suffering,  and  the  only  solution  we  can  seek 
about  final  things  is  to  be  found  in  humble  life,  in  action 
and  endurance,  far  from  the  tangle  of  words.      After  all 

[A  poor  woman  dying  in  Whitechapel.] 


34  NEW  AND  OLD 

it  is  the  pure  in  heart,  not  the  talkers,  who  see  God.  And 
how  strange  it  is  that  the  same  bodily  suffering  should 
destroy  faith  in  some  and  confirm  it  in  others  !  Behold, 
these  things  are  a  mystery,     (1892.) 

15 

[Tennyson's  Funeral] 

I  have  just  returned  from  the  Abbey,  and  I  am  sure  you 
would  have  felt  with  me  that  it  bore  a  wonderful  impression 
of  that  kingly  personality — of  his  state  and  his  simplicity. 
Every  inch  of  standing-room  was  thronged  by  11.30,  and 
every  place  seemed  full  of  a  noble  sorrow.  The  Gordon 
boys  were  outside  and  presented  arms  when  the  coffin 
arrived,  covered  by  the  Union  Jack  and  having  only  laurel 
wreaths  down  its  centre.  .  .  .  Poet's  Corner  was  flooded 
with  sunshine.  When  the  procession  moved  there  from 
the  Altar-steps,  all  the  poets  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  their 
mighty  brother  and  to  be  stretching  white  arms  of  welcome 
to  him.  .  .  .  And  they  and  he  seemed  so  much  more  alive 
than  most  of  the  people  around  that  one  could  only  reverse 
the  usual  words  and  say,  '  In  the  midst  of  Death  we  are  in 
Life.'     {October  12,  1892.) 

16 

There  is  some  support,  not  consolation — is  there  not  ? — in 
the  thought  that  the  real  things  of  life  are  sacred  and  one 
with  death  and  all  that  is  beyond  ;  that,  in  feeling  for 
them,  we  are  one  with  that  which  God  has  taken  to  himself. 
.  .  .  Theo's  swift,  tender  insight,  her  fantastic  grace,  her 
distinction  of  soul,  her  genius  for  companionship,  and  her 
dainty  mirth  have  put  a  fragrance  into  my  life  which  will 
always  make  the  world  a  sweeter  place  for  me.  .  .  .  One 
knows,  in  thinking  of  her,  why  the  world  has  lived  on  the 
faith  that  God  was  made  a  little  child.  .  .  .  For  any  one 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  35 

who  has  known  her  there  is  no  need  to  quarrel  about  creeds. 
.  .  .  Genius  for  life  such  as  hers  must  include  the  life 
beyond,  beside  every  form  of  life  here  from  highest  to 
lowest.     (1896.) 

17 

[After  visiting  a  dying  woman  in  Whitechapel,  a  protegee 
for  sixteen  years.] 

It  was  all  profoundly  moving  and  heartrending.  The 
doctor  had  given  her  up,  and  she  seemed  to  be  dying,  and 
had  that  look  of  dignity  and  beauty  which  Death  gives 
alike  to  kings  and  beggars.  The  strangely  faithful  love — 
so  undeserved  and  so  bountifully  given — of  a  simple  un- 
trained heart  like  hers  humbles  and  blesses  one.     (1898.) 

18 

My  Lafayette  experience  has  been  wonderful  in  charm  if 
not  in  bulk.  I  started  early  from  Fontainebleau,  got  out 
at  Montgeron,  and  of  course  found  the  distance  more  like 
five  than  two  kilometres.  I  first  travelled  in  a  sort  of 
coach  to  the  dear,  drowsy  village  of  Yeres,  which  might 
be  buried  ten  fathoms  deep  in  the  Provinces  instead  of 
being  near  Paris.  The  road  to  it  runs  by  the  silver  river 
Yeres,  a  tributary  of  the  Seine,  bordered  by  pollarded 
willows.  In  the  heart  of  the  slumbrous  little  place  is  an 
ancient  feudal  tower  with  turrets,  and  opposite  to  it  a 
Renaissance  fountain.  The  tower,  I  find,  is  all  that  remains 
of  a  castle,  of  which  it  formed  the  gateway  and  which 
belonged  to  Charles  vin.'s  secretary ;  the  fountain  was 
formerly  in  the  garden.  The  whole  village  became  so  much 
excited  by  my  arrival  and  the  fact  that  there  was  nothing 
for  me  to  eat  within  a  radius  of  some  miles,  that  it  seemed 
likely  an  emeute  would  ensue.  At  last,  as  I  was  still  wander- 
ing about  in  search  of  food,  two  opulent  old  gentlemen  in 


36  NEW  AND  OLD 

straw  hats  (a  kind  of  French  Brothers  Cheery ble)  peered 
over  their  villa-wall  and  directed  me  to  a  funny  little  pot- 
house, where  two  Jacques-Bonshommes  from  the  fields 
were  munching,  and  there  I  found  bread  and  cream-cheese. 
I  hired  the  only  carriage  and  drove  about  a  mile,  with  beat- 
ing heart,  down  the  stately  sycamore  avenue  of  La  Grange, 
on  either  side  the  whitening  wheat-fields  which  Lafayette 
was  so  sanguine  about  ninety  years  ago. 

The  chateau  is  beautiful  and  wonderfully  impressive  ; 
red-brick  faced  with  white  ;  built  in  Henry  iv.'s  time,  and 
surrounded  by  a  deep  moat :  with  endless  broad  grassy 
avenues  on  either  side,  like  those  at  St.  Cloud,  and  breezy 
meadows  with  elms  beyond  them.  It  belonged  at  one 
time  to  the  murdered  Guise's  widow,  then  to  Louis  xin.  It 
is  now  let  to  a  tenant — no  descendant  of  Lafayette — who 
has  been  there  for  twenty-five  years.  All  approach  is 
forbidden,  entrance  inside  impossible,  and  I  had  to  bribe 
the  lady  of  the  Bakery  to  allow  me  to  go,  accompanied  by 
her,  round  to  the  other  side  of  the  house  ;  and  there  I 
sought  and  found  Fox's  ivy-tree.1  No  one  knows  any- 
thing about  it.  It  is  the  only  one  on  the  house.  I  was 
separated  from  it  by  the  moat,  so  I  had  to  pick  some  leaves 
growing  near  the  bridge — one  for  you  and  one  for  me.  I 
came  away,  still  more  I  stood  there,  with  tears  in  my  heart 
if  not  in  my  eyes,  and  felt  the  spirit-touch  of  the  noble 
souls  that  haunt  that  avenue  and  hover  over  those  sun- 
tanned walls.  The  air  was  full  of  the  scent  of  limes,  and 
the  shifting  clouds  and  lights  and  shadows  seemed  all  one 
with  the  house  and  its  history.2     (1897.) 

1  [Fox  and  his  wife  stayed  for  some  time  with  the  Lafayettes  in  1802,  and 
he  planted  against  the  house  an  ivy-tree,  which  had  overrun  its  walls  before 
Lafayette  died  in  1834.  —  The  Household  of  the  Lafayettes,  p.  304.] 

2  [La  Grange  in  later  years  was  inhabited,  and  is  so  still,  by  the  Marquis 
de  Lasteyrie,  great-grandson  to  Lafayette.  Edith  Sichel  met  the  Marquis 
and  Marquise  in  London,  was  much  gratified  by  their  appreciation  of  her 
book,  and  paid  a  delightful  visit  to  them  at  the  chateau.] 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  37 

19 

The  most  formidable  person  in  Paris  is  the  old  waiter  who 
guards  the  Eden  of  the  Cafe  Foyot  with  his  violent  whiskers, 
for  all  the  world  like  a  fierce  old  prawn.  I  am  sure  that  he 
was  born  at  the  bottom  of  a  Foyot  sauce-pan  in  an  ocean 
of  Bouillabaisse  and  had  a  prawn  for  his  Papa.  However, 
the  savants  and  charming  French  literary  world  still  gather 
comfortably  together  and  dine  beneath  his  awful  aegis.  I 
seem  to  have  dwelt  rather  disproportionately  on  him,  but 
he  represents  one  whole  side  of  Paris,  the  Olympian,  matter- 
of-fact  side  that  makes  them  take  food  so  seriously  and 
evoke  so  much  from  material  life.     (1898.) 

20 

Tours. 

We  began  with  Matthew  Arnold's  Church  at  Brou,  the 
most  moving  and  lovely  rendering  of  love  in  marble  that 
ever  I  beheld.  Margaret  of  Parma  herself  is  masculine, 
regal,  almost  stern,  excepting  for  her  long  rippling  hair, 
but  her  husband  was  not  called  Philibert  le  Beau  for  nothing. 
He  lies  with  his  beautiful  face  turned  tenderly  towards  his 
mother,  a  lovely  marble  woman  sleeping  amongst  sculp- 
tured Saints  a  few  yards  behind  him.  His  figure  is  sur- 
rounded by  stately  child-angels,  one  holding  his  helmet, 
another  his  gauntlet,  the  four  others  only  looking  at  him — 
not  sad,  only  contemplative.  Margaret's  Oratory,  where 
she  came  eveiy  day  to  pray  after  she  had  built  the  Church, 
is  now  behind  his  tomb.  It  touched  me  doubly  because  it 
had  a  fireplace,  which  gave  it  the  feeling  of  a  home ;  one 
felt  that  she  lived  there.  The  Church  used  to  stand  in  the 
midst  of  a  wood,  but  now  the  forest  has  receded. 

The  whole  thing  brought  before  one  the  immensity  and 
endurance  of  love  and  the  presence  of  death  in  so  intense 
a  way  that  poetry  would  have  been  the  only  relief.  The 
thought  was  almost  a  weight  of  beauty  and  melancholy. 


38  NEW  AND  OLD 

21 

Hotel  de  l'Univers, 
Tours,  June  1898. 

Take  care  of  this  crumpled  leaf — for  where  do  you  think  it 
comes  from  ?     From  the  garden  of  Nohant — from  George 
Sand's    own    shady   path.     Suddenly,    at   the   junction    of 
Moulins,  Emily  and  I  discovered  that  we  could  arrive  in  a 
few  hours  at  La  Chatre  if  we  deserted  our  luggage,  which  we 
knew  to  be  safe,  and  arrived  with  the  bag  that  we  had  in 
the  railway-carriage.     After  lunching  at  a  dear  small  Bour- 
bonnais  village  called  Bessay  we  caught  our  train  and  duly 
arrived.     I  can  never  describe  to  vou  the  romance  of  that 
twilight  journey  through  Berri,  with  the  Indre  winding  like 
a  silver  scroll,  and  the  poplars  bordering  its  banks,  and  the 
elder-scent  almost  heavy  on  the  evening  breeze.     Then  the 
rapturous,  if  flea-bitten,  night  at  the  pot-house  of  the  little 
town  of  La  Chatre,  wiled  away  by  Berrichon  songs  and 
brawls  in  the  Cabaret  two  yards  off  ;   then  morning  chicory 
and  water,  and  8  o'clock  start  for  Nohant.     Our  host  was 
the  intimate  friend   of  George   Sand,   a   Berrichon  like   a 
foaming  bottle  of  French  wine,  who  called  us  '  mes  enf ants  '  ; 
and  he  drove  us  in  the  same  Americaine  in  which  he  had 
driven  her  constantly  to  and  from  Nohant.     An  Americaine, 
let  me  tell  you,  is  a  kind  of  run-to-seed    buggy  with  the 
front  of  a  cart  and  the  other  half  a  landau.     It  took  us  at 
a  trot  through  page  after  page  of  her  books  ;   past  wide  and 
gentle  sweeps  of  country — generous  uplands  and  rich  meadows 
■ — with  the  charming  Indre  at  every  turn,  fragrant  hedgerows, 
grey-green  oat-fields  thronged  with  poppies  and  cornflowers 
— whilst  gardeuses  de  trowpeaux,  knitting  as  they  walked 
after  their  flocks  or  sate  beneath  clumps  of  elder,  met  the 
eye   constantly,   their   hair   covered   by   the   square   white 
bonnet  she  so  often  describes.     Sometimes  it  was  a  cartful 
of  laughing  Berrichons  who  crossed  our  road,  their  sunny 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  39 

faces  full  of  traditions  and  honesty  and  shrewdness.  Every- 
body who  spoke  to  us  of  George  Sand  talked  as  if  she  had 
died  yesterday.  Our  driver  said  he  used  to  see  her  almost 
daily  in  the  lanes.  '  Elle  marchait  a  travers  les  champs — 
toujours  comme  9a  '  (wide  gesture  of  the  arms),  in  her  man's 
clothes  unless  she  was  on  the  high-road,  '  et  toujours, 
toujours  une  cigarette  a  la  bouche.'  He  and  his  wife 
had  been  real  comrades  of  hers.  '  Elle  venait  chez  nous 
pour  tout ;  elle  menait  un  grand  train,  souvent  25  pour  le 
diner.  "  Avez-vous  des  ecrevisses  pour  moi  aujourd'hui, 
mes  amis  ?  "  elle  demandait,  et  elle  prenait  ce  qu'elle 
voulait.'  The  wife  dwelt  most  on  the  '  grand  train  '  of 
her  existence,  but  the  man  had  accepted  her  personality  and 
her  genius,  if  not  as  God  made  them,  at  any  rate  as  a  pro- 
duction peculiar  to  Berri  in  which  he  had  a  share.  What 
was  striking  was  that  everybody  spoke  of  her  as  one  of 
them,  greater  than  they  but  quite  as  much  a  Berrichon  as 
a  celebrity,  and  as  giving  much  employment  to  all  the 
country-side.  '  Ah,  elle  faisait  du  bien,  celle-la,  il  y  avait 
toujours  des  gens  qui  allaient  et  venaient  de  Paris.'  Our 
host  had  driven  Alexandre  Dumas  Fils,  Theophile  Gautier 
(je  l'ai  connu  bien,  celui-la),  Victor  Hugo,  another  whose 
name  ended  in  0 — he  could  get  no  nearer  than  that — et 
tout  5a.  He  showed  us  the  actual  Mill  of  Angibeau,  as 
white  as  the  Berri  cows  which  pasture  everywhere ;  and 
then  came  the  vine-covered  Cabaret  where  she  took  her 
8  a.m.  glass  of  wine,  during  her  morning  stroll, 

Nohant  itself  is  all  that  one  has  fancied,  and  much  more 
lovable  than  imagination  could  make  it — a  long  low  ram- 
bling white  house  with  a  grey  slate  roof  and  a  comfortable 
rather  ramshackle  (or  rather  ungirt)  look.  The  garden  is  a 
delightful  mixture  of  potager  and  wood,  with  one  long  path 
untidily  edged  by  roses,  pinks,  columbines  and  sweet- 
briar,  at  the  end  of  which  are  two  small  rustic  benches 
without  backs  and  opposite  each  other,  embodying  in  their 


40  NEW  AND  OLD 

every  inch  untold  hours  of  absorbing  topics,  and  evidently 
expressly  intended  for  G.  S.  and  (let  us  say)  Flaubert. 
Near  this  comes  a  large  yard  and  then  a  charming  broad 
grassy  plot,  studded  by  huge  elms.  Here  she  used  to  make 
the  village  lads  and  lasses  dance  to  the  cornemuse.  It  is 
surrounded  on  three  sides  by  tumbledown  farm-buildings. 
Behind  the  flower-walk  is  the  little  family  burial-ground. 
Her  tomb  has  a  simple  slab  with  '  Georges  Sand ' — nothing 
more — written  on  it;  the  Sth  of  June  had  been  her  birth- 
day, and  the  slab  was  piled  high  with  wreaths.  The  graves 
of  Maurice  and  two  grandchildren  are  there  too.  Maurice's 
widow  and  her  two  daughters,  Aurore  and  Lucie,  live  there, 
but  are  absent  just  now.  Aurore  is  artistic,  and  is  said  to 
look  like  her  grandmother. 

One  of  the  most  vivid  things  was  the  village  Cabaret 
where  George  Sand  used  to  go  every  night  with  her  com- 
rades, and  for  which  she  had  painted  a  sign-board  (very 
badly) ;  a  house  with  '  Si  nous  alliens  boire  une  bouteille  ' 
written  underneath.  It  is  kept  by  an  old  crone  who  had 
been  her  waiting-maid  for  years  and  had  served  at  table. 
'  Ah,je  Vaimais,''  she  said,  '  elle  etait  bonne  envers  tous  .  .  . 
non,  non,  elle  n'etait  pas  coquette,  pas  du  tout ;  elle  se 
coiffait  tout  simplement  en  bandeaux  comme  mes  sceurs, 
j'en  avais  seize,  moi  (here  followed  spasmodic  photographs 
of  sisters  in  groups).  Seulement  quand  le  Prince  Napoleon 
ou  peut-etre  M.  Dumas  venait,  elle  mettait  une  belle  robe 
et  se  coiffait  tres-bien.'  The  gardener,  who  had  been  her 
farm-man,  showed  us  a  little  old  summer-house  where  she 
sometimes  sat  up  all  night  writing,  and  told  us  that  she 
had  '  toujours  ete  bonne  et  juste  envers  ses  gens,  quoiqu'elle 
avait  l'abord  un  peu  rude.' 

I  must  cease  these  emotions,  and  wish  I  had  left  room 
to  describe  our  lovely  Chateaux — Chinon,  Azay-le-rideau, 
Usse,  Langeais,  or  the  Library  of  Tours  where  I  read  to-day, 
or  the  Cathedral. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  41 

22 

We  have  been  choosing  a  hedge  to  protect  our  border.  I 
wish  you  knew  the  charming  nursery-gardener  we  deal  with, 
a  regular  Surrey  pippin,  always  emitting  unconscious 
proverbs,  who  speaks  of  his  plants  as  '  he  '  or  '  she.'  Yester- 
day he  showed  us  a  weeping  beech.  '  You  wouldn't  believe 
it,'  he  said,  '  wot  that  tree  was  ;  he  would  not  do  nohow  ; 
we  tried  him  flat,  we  tried  him  upright ;  then  sudden  we 
put  him  on  a  stand  and  tried  him  as  a  weeper,  and  he  's 
done  beautiful.'  Isn't  this  like  a  certain  sort  of  human 
being  ?  I  can  count  the  ones  who  can't  lie  flat  or  stand 
upright,  but  do  beautiful  as  weepers.     (1898.) 


23 

In  the  National  Gallery  I  chiefly  gave  myself  up  to  Piero 
della  Francesca.  How  subtle  and  how  naif  he  is,  both  at 
once  !  He  seems  to  foreshadow  the  moderns  in  his  love  of 
the  queer  type,  and  in  seeing  what  he  painted  in  a  way 
that  belongs  to  a  special  attitude  of  mind.  What  an  appeal- 
ing attitude  !  And  what  a  world  of  difference  between 
him  and  them  !  He  gives  us  beauty,  and  his  love  of  the 
strange  comes  from  fresh  morning  senses,  not  from  restless 
and  sated  ones. 

Certainly  the  outburst  of  the  Italian  painters  has  no 
counterpart  for  simultaneousness  except  in  our  Elizabethan 
outburst.  Both  keep  the  same  glorious  level  for  their 
second-rates.  So  many  could  paint  one  picture  or  one 
figure  in  a  picture,  could  write  one  poem  or  play  or  one 
passage  in  it,  that  belong  to  the  best,  if  they  could  not  keep 
up  their  highest  level  for  long.  Sustained  fertility  at  the 
highest  level  must  be  the  mark  of  the  Titans  alone,  and 
even  they  have  their  more  or  less.     (1898.) 


42  NEW  AND  OLD 

24 

The  sweet  little  class  has  just  departed.  B.  arrived,  very 
alert  historically  and  covered  with  aspinall  physically,  as 
she  had  been  blacking  soldiers.  H.  and  G.  discussed  Drake's 
morals  deliciously,  and  appealed  to  B.  as  umpire  ;  she  was 
modest  but  decided  in  Drake's  favour.  C.  only  answers 
questions  connected  with  the  Magellan  Straits.  The  class 
might  really  have  been  denned  to-day  as  a  game  of  Ducks 
and  Drake.     (1899.) 

25 

I  have  been  finishing  my  book  [Women  and  Men  of  the 
French  Renaissance],  and  I  blush  to  think  how  much  it 
means  to  me.  I  shall  indeed  feel  rewarded  if  you  find  an 
improvement.  The  older  one  grows  the  more  one  finds 
the  great  secret  in  art  and  in  life  is  the  same  one — to  forget 
self,  or  rather  lose  yourself  that  you  may  find  yourself. 
And  the  work  of  the  mediocre  with  the  wish  to  write — like 
myself — is  to  sacrifice  anything  and  everything  to  the 
subject  in  hand. 

The  Rabelais  chapter  was  a  joy  to  work  at,  and  I  enjoyed 
Ronsard  and  Du  Bellay.     (1900.) 

26 

I  have  just  been  wandering  in  exquisite  Corot  and  Diaz 
woods  and  meadows  and  along  the  banks  of  a  perfect 
Daubigny  river — a  land  which  is,  alas,  to  vanish  this  week. 
Mary  actually  consented  to  come  with  me,  and  what  I  am 
fullest  of  is  the  new  Piero  di  Cosimo  which  we  saw  first 
in  Ryder  Street,  the  battle  of  the  Centaurs — very  exciting, 
full  of  fantastic  beauty  and  fantastic  ugliness  and  intel- 
lectual wine — altogether  the  quintessence  of  the  Renais- 
sance spirit.  We  looked  at  it  for  half  an  hour  to  the  tune 
of  Roger  Fry's  charming  and  humorous  comments. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  43 

The  Robe  Rouge  was  very  enjoyable  last  night — a  fine 
literary  satire  by  Brieux  on  the  administration  of  Law  in 
France.  Rejane's  acting  was  very  fine,  though  perhaps  a 
shade  too  violent,  as  the  peasant  woman  ruined  by  Justice. 
.  .  .  How  is  it  that  French  actors  can  put  worldly  success  or 
failure  into  their  very  beards  and  whiskers — simply  through 
some  actor's  mastery  of  expression  ?  The  whiskers  of  the 
magistrate  who  cannot  rise  because  he  is  honest  were  a  study 
of  dejection.     (1902.) 

27 

I  have  been  enormously  uplifted  by  reading  the  Life  of 
Pasteur  .  .  .  the  most  Christ-like  life  it  has  been  my 
fortune  to  meet.  His  endless,  victorious  struggle  with 
suffering  and  disease  for  Humanity's  sake,  his  simple 
patience  and  infinite  compassion,  his  intense  faith  in  God 
and  the  Life  Eternal,  make  it  a  holy  book  and  a  much 
richer  one  than  the  lives  of  other  men  of  science. 

Nothing  helps  sorrow — does  it  ? — like  goodness  and  your  1 
healing  Nature  ;  words,  even  words  of  prayer,  are  bound 
to  ring  thin  at  moments,  often  for  much  longer  .  .  .  and 
how  well  do  I  realise  that  sense  of  futility  which  comes  and 
overwhelms  you.  But  the  life  of  Love  and  the  Permanence 
of  Love  are  always  there,  often  powerless  to  the  eye,  never 
really  so,  and  ever  surrounding  even  the  poor  body  with 
kingly  dignity.     (1902.) 

28 

The  two  things  that  strike  me  most  about  people  just  now 
are  their  incapability  of  changing  and  their  faculty  for 
surprise  at  nothing  at  all,  at  utterly  unimportant  coinci- 
dences, while  they  are  quite  unaffected  by  the  really  sur- 
prising things  of  life — the  sky  and  the  trees  and  our  own 
stolidity,  and  the  extraordinary  temperings  of  the  wind  to 

1  [The  letter  was  written  to  Mary  Coleridge.] 


44  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  shorn  lambs,  and  the  marvellous  way  in  which  one  year 
is  made  utterly  different  to  another — and  the  patience  of 
God  and  the  presumption  of  us  mannikins.  And  this  dis- 
proportionate surprise  is  offensive  because  it  is  a  sort  of 
vulgar  relation  to  Awe  and  Reverence,  keeping  some  sort 
of  outward  resemblance  to  them  but  losing  all  their  soul 
and  dignity.     (1902.) 

29 

Rome. 

It  was  beautiful  on  Christmas  Eve  to  drive  along  the  Appian 
Way,  by  crumbling  walls  of  giant  girth,  sad  tombs  standing 
out  against  the  silver  sky  in  the  silver  and  brown  ocean  of 
the  Campagna,  with  all  the  mystery  of  Rome  pressing  on 
one's  soul,  yet  enchanting  it.  There  we  met  a  Cardinal  in 
scarlet  stockings  hobnobbing  with  his  coachman,  and  that 
is  the  most  Christian  sight  we  have  seen.  ...  I  can  pray 
better  in  the  Coliseum  than  in  St.  Peter's  unless  I  am  just 
under  Michael  Angelo's  Pieta.  But  what  was  really 
sweet  was  hearing  the  children  '  preach,'  one  after  the  other, 
on  their  traditional  wooden  rostrum  at  Ara  Coeli — tiny 
curates  of  four  and  five,  briskly  reciting  their  hymns  to  the 
Manger  ;  and  getting  nervous  ;  and  smiling  and  shaking 
their  heads  ;  and  being  lifted  from  the  pulpit  by  their 
waiting  congregation  of  parents — such  dear  shepherds  and 
Madonnas  and  St.  Elizabeths  from  the  Campagna,  all  so 
devout  and  at  home  in  their  vast  candle-lit  temples.  God 
bless  you  all  in  1904.     (1903.) 

30 

Dresden. 

I  have  been  to  the  Meistersinger  with  Scheidcmantel  singing. 
I  have  sate  in  the  1.50  Mark  gallery  next  a  fat  lady  in  a 
plaid-silk  blouse,  who  perpetually  said  '  Ach  Gott,  es  zieht,' 
and  rushed  out  to  shut  all  the  doors  of  that  suffocating  but 


EXTRACTS  FKOM  LETTERS  45 

happy  place.  I  have  adored  the  pictures  ;  I  have  bought 
toys  and  Wunder-Knauel  from  a  woman  like  a  lighted 
Christmas-tree  ;  I  have  bought  cakes  for  three  pence  from 
a  woman  like  a  delicious  bun  ;  I  have  become  so  absorbed 
in  contemplating  a  drab-flannel  jacket  with  a  saque,  marked 
'  Hochst  Modem,'  that  I  was  nearly  run  over  by  a  Stadts- 
Tram — I  have  in  short  led  the  Dresden  life.  One  of  the 
things  that  has  fascinated  me  most  is  that  magic  collection 
of  Chinese  China — its  heart-searching  colours,  and  fairy- 
like charm,  and  Great-Mogul  vases,  dead-blue  and  lilac 
and  gold.  Those  jars  look  for  all  the  world  like  wicked 
potentates  condemned  to  stand  on  shelves,  transformed — 
superb  and  impotent. 

The  latest  chic  among  the  Dresden  ladies  is  to  dress  like 
travelling-bags  neatly  trimmed  with  straps.  I  actually  saw 
one  in  a  dark  green  Russia-leather  collar  and  revers.  The 
waiters,  in  face  and  manner,  have  been  influenced  by  China 
of  a  bad  period,  and  mince  and  flourish  like  commercial 
little  shepherds.  This  hotel  is  in  the  pocket  of  the  Opera 
and  of  the  Picture  Gallery,  and  looks  upon  the  river  with 
its  evening  stream  of  lights,  like  an  urban  heaven  of  sweet 
sophisticated  stars. 

Prague  was  grim  and  fascinating — like  a  wild  and  fasci- 
nating person  with  a  secret  grudge.  One  wants  to  leave  it 
at  once,  and  yet  it  haunts  one.  I  felt  this  especially  in  the 
Jewish  Cemetery — the  oldest,  proudest  and  most  desolate 
place  I  have  seen.  It  gave  me  a  strange  feeling  to  stand 
at  the  tombstone  of  our  tribe,  900  a.d.,  and  see  its  symbol 
(each  headstone  has  the  name  in  a  picture,  the  name  never 
written) ;  in  our  case  (the  tribe  of  Levi)  a  tall  jug — which 
it  pleased  me  to  fancy  was  for  ever  full.  The  sign  of  those 
learned  in  the  Talmud  is  a  bunch  of  grapes.  The  oldest 
scholar's  grave  is  600  a.d.,  and  heaven  knows  how  many 
great  old  Rabbis  lie  there,  memorable  and  forgotten,  below 
their  stone  clusters  of  fruits.     The  sign  of  Aaron's  tribe  is 


46  NEW  AND  OLD 

two  hands,  and  Mr.  Hahn  lies  interred  beneath  a  crowing 
cock. 

And  the  wind  and  the  rain  were  sobbing  all  round  the 
place,  and  all  the  melancholy  of  my  race  seemed  to  rise 
up  and  answer  them.     (1905.) 


31 

Padua. 

We  are  just  back  from  a  divine  day  at  Castelfranco. 
Giorgione's  picture  glowed  in  the  mellow  light,  the  St.  George 
and  his  armour  so  vital  with  beauty  that  he  made  every- 
thing out  of  the  picture  seem  mere  shadow.  The  Madonna 
on  her  throne  is  so  beautiful  that  the  restoration  doesn't 
seem  to  matter  so  much  as  I  dreaded,  and  the  whole  is  such 
a  heaven  of  tone  and  harmony  as  one  could  never  realise 
from  any  description.  Then  we  had  coffee  in  the  sun- 
flooded  street,  opposite  the  great  red-brick  city-wall,  with 
a  tide  of  burning  creeper  flowing  over  it ;  and  so  back 
through  the  little  tiny  New  Jerusalem,  with  the  sunset 
over  the  Alps  and  over  the  grape-hung  festoons  that 
link  the  mulberry-trees  together,  while  here  and  there 
were  groups  of  graceful  peasants  garnering  in  their 
vintage. 

To-morrow  we  go  for  the  day  to  Vicenza  and  pursue 
Montagna,  that  most  fascinating  painter,  in  his  own  Palla- 
dian  city. 

Padua  is  entirely  sympathetic.  Every  stone  seem  sim- 
printed  with  learning,  the  glorious  early-morning  learning  of 
the  first  Renaissance,  when  every  scholar  came  here  to  learn 
with  all  the  force  of  maturity  and  the  passionate  curiosity 
of  youth.  There  on  their  tombs  they  still  look  forth  from 
sunny  cloisters  and  shady  churches,  sculptured  at  their 
desks  or  in  their  pulpits  with  square  caps  and  University 
robes.     (1906.) 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  47 

32 

Mantua. 

A  lucky  star  guided  us  at  Mantua,  for  directly  we  arrived 
we  sailed  out  into  the  great  mere  that  surrounds  it,  and  into 
depths  of  sunset  amid  fantastic  armies  of  bulrushes  and 
fleets  of  water-lily  leaves — rose-fire  above  and  below  us, 
every  spike  and  blade  reflected  also,  and  behind  us  the  city 
wrapped  in  deep  blue  mist :  then  the  sharp  crescent  of  the 
moon  above  and  below,  and  the  evening  star  like  a  spiral 
flame  (by  some  secret  of  refraction),  and  so  back  by  moon- 
light— a  most  weird  enchanted  impression.  We  seemed  to 
have  seen  the  ghost  of  the  city  of  Mantua  before  we  saw 
its  dead  and  cold  body.     (1906.) 

33 

1  have  finished  the  appetising  Fenelon.  What  a  Frenchman 
he  is — the  very  root  of  all  the  spiritual  chic  in  the  R.  C. 
Church  which  some  find  so  alluring !  Yet  his  central 
doctrine  that  love  is  all — that  it  is  not  the  path  we  tread 
that  matters,  but  the  foot  that  treads  it — is  beautiful,  wise 
and  consoling.  All  the  same,  the  path  that  he  trod  was  a 
little  slippery  sometimes.  He  had,  I  think,  in  petto  both 
Montaigne  (as  to  sense  and  wit,  but  the  wit  is  sharper 
than  in  Montaigne)  and  St.  Frangois  de  Sales,  but  no  Pascal. 
What  do  you  think  of  his  '  Our  days  are  short,  but  our  hours 
are  long '  ?     A  profound  saying,  I  think.     (1907.) 

34 

Life  certainly  does  seem  the  most  hateful  of  things ;  but 
au  fond  it  isn't.  It  will  always  be  lovable  because  of  love, 
will  it  not  ?  And,  after  all,  duty  is  only  love  hardened  and 
extended  beyond  the  personal  sphere.  I  suppose  we  don't 
easily  grasp,  in  earlier  life  at  least,  that  love  is   a  hard 


48  NEW  AND  OLD 

discipline — both  love  of  God  and  love  of  man,  and  that  it 
leads  us  into  dark  places  while  it  glorifies  them.  It 
certainly  makes  us  stick  to  our  post. 

Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  as  if  life  and  this  planet  meant 
a  long  duel  between  God  and  Nature  ;  as  if  hitherto  omni- 
potence had  been  incompatible  with  all-goodness,  and  God 
has  renounced  Power  in  order  to  be  Goodness  itself  ;  as  if 
omnipotence  and  goodness  could  only  be  one  when  man 
himself  had  grown  perfect  and  stood  on  the  confines  of 
infinity — and  then  Nature  would  be  conquered  by  God,  and 
happiness  would  begin  ;  so  that  perhaps  we  are  building 
up  God's  omnipotence  by  our  bitter  combat.  Man,  at  all 
events,  seems  to  go  through  some  such  struggle,  and  for 
ever  provides  the  field  on  which  Nature  and  the  Spirit  fight 
for  victory.  And  each  advance  that  he  makes  is  a  fresh 
victory  over  matter,  so  that  perhaps,  in  the  most  mysterious 
trials  of  all  and  the  dustiest,  the  spirit  is  going  strongest 
by  the  very  awfulness  of  the  wrestling.  Anyhow,  or  so  it 
seems  to  me,  we  must  stick  by  our  own  spirits  in  the 
conflict. 

Forgive  this  rhodomontade.  When  one  tries  to  express 
definitely  what  one  means,  which  is  inexpressible,  one  always 
ends  by  writing  apparent  nonsense.     (1908.) 

35 

At  St.  Thomas's  I  found the  Brave,  walking  on 

two  arms,  shawl-less,  across  the  yard  to  the  Hospital,  like 
a  Vi-Queen,  after  an  operation.  The  Hospital  (not  the 
Nursing  Home)  Christmas  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
sights  aesthetically  as  well  as  spiritually  that  I  have  ever 
seen.  The  Babies'  Ward  made  me  feel  choky.  In  the 
middle  was  an  immense  Tree  of  the  Knowledge  of  Sweet- 
ness and  Light,  and  the  highly-polished  floor  reflected  the 
lights  as  if  it  were  water.     And  in  the  midst  of  these  opal 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  49 

pools  of  light  sate  bunches  of  babies  in  spotless  white 
shawls,  like  clustered  Bambini-angels,  all  round  little  low 
tea-tables,  each  presided  over  by  an  older  baby  pouring 
out  tea.  Round  the  room  were  the  beds,  full  of  prostrate 
cherubs,  too  ill  to  get  up ;  before  them  trays  laden  with 
presents ;  and  here  and  there  the  house-surgeons  in  white 
linen  coats,  beaming  and  ministering,  did  not  look  so  very 
unlike  the  Saints. 

Everywhere  down  the  long  shadowy  corridors — like  aisles 
of  some  great  Church  of  Humanity— one  caught  vistas  of 
other  Wards,  their  floors  also  a  mirror  of  colour  and  misty 
brilliance  ;  and  outside  through  the  windows  across  the 
grey  river  there  moved,  as  if  in  space,  fresh  bunches  of 
luminous  grapes,  borne  apparently  by  huge  chariots  which 
turned  out  to  be  Trams  or  Buses.     (1908.) 


36 

I  have  no  business  to  have  dumps  after  the  Hippocrene 
elixir  of  Anatole  France  last  night — wine  of  the  Gods,  or 
rather  music.  Wit  hardly  seems  the  word  for  the  con- 
tinuous warm  tempered  light  which  flowed  from  him — 
never  flashing  or  spasmodic,  but  like  nature  itself. 

I  agree  with  every  word  you  say  about  Anatole  France 
and  the  metallic  quality  in  him.  My  mind  enjoys  his 
Hippocrene  when  my  soul  and  heart  rebel  and  hate.  But 
he  is  so  much  bigger  than  his  books.  I  went  only  expect- 
ing amusement,  and  was  not  prepared  for  a  man  who 
seemed  pushed  by  some  force  outside  himself,  instead  of  by 
talent  inside.  And  he  looks  like  a  Don  Quixote  who  cannot 
be  Don  Quixote  because  he  cannot  take  windmills  for  any- 
thing but  what  they  are.  His  eyes  are  sad,  but  he  has  a 
smile  like  winter  sunshine  over  a  frosty  landscape.  And 
his  voice  is  like  a  violin.  And  I  am  like  a  fiddle-de-dee. 
(1912.) 

D 


50  NEW  AND  OLD 


37 


To  come  back  to  Law,  I  agree  with  every  word  you  say, 
and  you  hit  upon  the  passages  I  love  best  in  the  Liberal  and 
Mystical  Writings.1  I  quite  agree  with  you  that  these  later 
writings  grew  out  of  the  earlier  ones,  and  that  his  capitula- 
tion to  Boehme  was  natural  growth  and  not  conversion. 
I  suspect  the  intellectual  side  of  him  was  too  monochrome, 
too  much  wanting  in  imaginative  power  outside  religion, 
to  make  him  understand  the  true  relation  of  the  mind 
to  God.  Nearly  all  mystics  seem  to  me  weak  in  this, 
that  they  exclude  the  fact  that  we  owe  all  our  powers  to 
God — that  the  holy  tiling  is  to  turn  them  towards  Him  and 
bathe  them  in  His  light,  not  to  get  rid  of  them  ;  and  that 
it  is  in  using  them  thus  that  we  can  make  goodness  attrac- 
tive, not  by  stripping  our  beings.  That  is  only  a  short  cut. 
Tolstoi  makes  the  same  mistake,  and  it  is  bound  to  end  in  a 
certain  loss  of  force.  As  you  say,  it  needs  a  very  holy  man 
to  throw  away  knowledge.  Law  could  do  it,  but  who  shall 
say  that  Law,  whose  path  was  light,  would  not  have  shed 
his  light  more  widely  had  he  given  it  more  channels  ?  It 
always  makes  me  uneasy  when  inspiring  writers  leave  out 
the  sense  of  beauty.  But  '  stars  are  of  mighty  use,'  and 
Law  is  a  star.  And  he  has  got  hold  of  the  great  truth  that 
being  is  the  main  business  of  life,  and  that  deeds  only  count 
when  they  spring  from  being.  I  think  I  tend  to  believe 
that  mystics  are  born  mystics  :  St.  Theresa,  St.  Augustine, 
that  (to  me)  most  tiresome  Juliana  of  Norwich,  and  St. 
Catherine  of  Siena.  I  don't  count  Madame  Guyon.  She 
seems  to  me  a  kind  of  manufactured  mystic  and  rather 
smack-worthy  !  Of  course  there  must  be  many  who  come 
to  the  mystic  faith  after  much  experience,  but  don't  you 
think  that  the  seed  was  lying  passive  far  down  in  their 

1  [Liberal  and  Mystical  Writings  of  William  Law,  ed.  Scott  Palmer  and 
Du  Bose,  1908.] 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  51 

souls  till  life  brought  it  forth  ?  If  it  is  grown  from  experi- 
ence, then  it  is  to  be  ranked  with  other  structural  growths. 
But  if  it  is  really  vision — God-given — then  there  is  more 
in  it.  Only  to  me  that  kind  of  vision  appears  to  be  given 
to  so  very  few,  and  then  it  is  a  fountain  of  life,  not  a  rule 
of  conduct.  It  seems  to  me,  as  does  all  exceptional  truth, 
like  Rabelais'  wine  in  the  temple  of  Bacbuc,  which  the 
priestess  gave  alike  to  all  seekers  of  her  altar,  but  which 
tasted  different  to  the  lips  of  each.  .  .  .  What  a  bore  I 
am. — Forgive  me  ! 

Here  we  are  in  detestable  Switzerland  on  the  way  to 
adorable  Italy.  I  can't  bear  its  ugly  beauty.  I  like  ugly 
ugliness  and  beautiful  ugliness,  but  not  ugly  beauty.     (1912.) 

38 

Perugia. 

I  should  like  to  be  able  to  send  you  a  slice  of  the  celestial 
Valley  of  Perugia  which  I  see  from  my  window.  To  the  east 
Assisi  shines  like  a  pearl  upon  the  hill  girt  with  vineyards. 
The  vintage  has  begun.  Piero  della  Francesca  men  and 
women  stand  like  kings  and  queens  upon  ladders,  and  throw 
down  the  heavy  purple  bunches,  and  little  Bacchuses  of 
four  with  tiny  Ariadnes  leap  about  crowned  with  vine- 
leaves  and  shout  something  very  like  Io  to  the  jolly  lean 
black  pigs  which  they  herd.  One's  soul  becomes  one's 
senses  here.     It  is  very  agreeable. 

One  of  the  most  blessed  things  we  did  was  to  drive  to 
the  Monte  Cavale  and  sit  there.  Every  inch  of  mountain- 
path  and  brown  earth  and  violet  valley  we  looked  at  had 
been  trodden  by  St.  Francis's  feet,  and  the  air,  too,  is  still 
alive  with  tales  of  his  miracles — puerile  often,  heavenly  also  ; 
and  they  and  the  little  cell  and  the  silent  rocks  are  still 
aggrandised  by  his  faith — a  greater  miracle  than  all  the 
miracles.  It  was  a  pendant  to  our  day  at  Port  Royal. 
And  what  a  South  Pole  to  Pascal's  North  Pole  (ice  burns, 


52  NEW  AND  OLD 

so  the  N.  P.  is  all  right  for  Pascal) !     I  do  so  like  your  calling 
Pascal   a  Matterhom.     I   wish   the   light   had   made   him 
happier.     I  always  feel,  but  I  say  it  in  abject  humility,  that 
he  made  one  terrible  mistake — he  hated  evil  more  than  he 
loved  his  fellows.     And  his  invention  of  the  Omnibus  for  the 
poor,  always  cited  as  a  proof  of  his  '  Agape,'  does  not  mend 
matters  at  all.     In  one  way  I  feel  as  if  he  were  like  Tolstoi  ; 
he  vents  his  repentance  for  his  own  sins  upon  mankind,  and 
lays  down  methods  very  suitable  to  those  who  have  intel- 
lectual pride,  but  not  the  rest.     Yet  nothing,  nothing,  beats 
the  Pensees,  and  I  well  understand  bearing  them  when  one 
can  bear  nothing  else.     If  only  he  and  St.  Francis  could  be 
welded  together  !     For  St.  F.  leaves  out  the  mind,  and  prob- 
ably doesn't  help  those  whose  minds  get  in  the  way  of  their 
loving   their   brethren.     In  the  letter  that  was    living  in 
the  depths  of  my  trunk  when  I  last  wrote,  you  said  so  truly 
that  goodness  must  seem  a  difficult  thing  till  it  is  found,  and 
then  it  would  seem  the  simplest.     And  that  applies  to  St. 
Francis,  but  not  to  Pascal,  who  never  found  goodness  simple 
and   never  quite  found   it.     St.   Francis   was   certainly  a 
mystic  who  did  apply  his  mysticism  to  conduct.     I  quite 
agree  with  what  you  say  of  the  need  of  '  daily  bread  unity  ' 
as  one  gets  older,  and  I  rather  suspect  mysticism  ought  to 
work  as  unconsciously  as  love — as  a  presence  which  makes 
action  vital,  not  as  a  creed.     Isn't  mysticism  like  wine,  only 
dangerous  when  we  drink  it  without  food  ?     Every  Sacra- 
mental thought  should  be  made  of  bread  and  wine  together. 
It  (mysticism)  might  easily  degenerate  into  a  short  cut  to 
goodness,  and  mistake  monotony  for  unity.  ...  I  expect 
that  the  whole  awful  secret  of  life  lies  in  the  true  placing  of 
being  and  doing.     The  average  man  overrates  doing,  and 
the  mystics  see  this  and,  knowing  that  being  is  the  main 
tiling,  they  virtually  make  it  the  only  one.     I  do  feel  as  if 
they  had  got  hold  of  a  truer  end  of  life  than  the  Christian- 
job  end.     (1912.) 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  53 

39 

BoRr;o  Sax  Sepolcro. 

You  cannot  think  what  a  sensation  is  Monte  Casale  with 
its  Monastery  built  on  to  the  little  stone  hermitage  hewn 
out  of  the  rock,  to  which  St.  Francis  came  after  the  Stigmata. 
There  you  find  him  on  the  rude  steep  little  staircase  leading 
up  to  the  stone  where  he  slept,  with  the  great  wooden 
Madonna  he  brought  with  him  and  his  rough  primitive 
Crucifix  still  there.  And  those  big  bare  mountain-tops, 
those  boulders  round  which  blue  butterflies  play,  the  whole 
landscape  austere  yet  smiling,  is  so  wonderfully  like  him. 
Not  an  inch  of  ground  that  he  looked  upon,  either  on  the 
heights  or  in  the  valley  below,  that  had  not  been  trodden 
upon  by  his  unwearying  feet.  Borgo  was  the  last  place  he 
stayed  at  before  he  returned  to  die  at  Assisi. 

I  saw  a  large  brown  butterfly  in  Franciscan  dress  embrace 
a  blue  thistle.  And  now  we  are  in  divine  Perugia,  and  our 
walk  in  the  valley  yesterday  was  enough  to  make  one  cry 
for  beauty.  Why  is  one  so  piercingly  happy  in  Italy  ? 
One's  senses  become  one's  soul,  and  one's  soul  one's  senses, 
and  the  weary  old  battle  between  them  ceases  to  be. 

I  send  you  three  Umbrian  Angels  to  take  care  of  your 
year.     (1912.) 

40 

Barmoor  Castle. 

Such  an  exciting  arrival  at  Berwick,  still  quite  light  at 
9.30,  the  hills  and  Abbey-towers  silver  and  grey,  and  the 
broad  stately  river  flowing  silver  under  the  strong  grey 
spanning  bridges — all  force  and  beauty.  It  is  such  a 
congenial  town  to  me,  the  town  of  middle-age,  brave  and 
strong  and  come  unto  itself — grey  without  gloom,  silver- 
grey  indeed  with  lights  of  its  own,  still  full  of  contrasts 
but  without  violence,  large  in  its  outlook,  fortified  enough, 
but  not  walled. 


54  NEW  AND  OLD 

It  looked  unearthlily  beautiful  as  I  sped  through  it  in  the 
motor,  and  so  did  the  long  Northumberland  roads  encased 
in  full-blossomed  hawthorn  all  silvery  in  the  twilight ;  silver, 
too,  the  little  fairy  rabbits  that  sate  in  the  wood  with  the 
motor-light  full  on  them,  and  scuttled  off  like  elves  of  the 
North  to  their  homes  in  the  down-like  fields.  Thrilling 
was  the  first  sight  of  the  sea  over  which  the  Danes  once  came 
sailing- — a  grim,  dim,  resolute  sea  ;  and  thrilling  the  sight 
of  Durham  Cathedral  from  the  train,  where  I  dined  in  the 
Restaurant  off  fried  leather.  At  Berwick  the  motor  (con- 
ducted by  an  angel  of  a  chauffeur  who  will,  I  hope,  drive 
me  on  the  Last  Day)  conveyed  me  to  this  haven  of  goodness 
and  pleasure,  where  I  'm  being  degenerately  pampered. 
(1912.) 

41 

E.  and  I  have  both  absorbed  with  deep  interest  the 
Rutherford  Paper.  He  interests  me  more  and  more.  His 
mind  was  so  strangely  morbid  for  its  vigour — a  remarkable 
vigour.  And  he  is  always  as  sincere  as  man  can  be,  and 
never  sentimental — another  spiritual  feat  in  a  man  of  his 

introspective    faculty.     was    describing    to    me    his 

impression  of  M.  R.  It 's  a  curious  game  to  take  the  two 
men  who  have  tried  to  talk  quite  sincerely  in  these  last 
twenty  years — the  one  with  reverence,  the  other  without — 
and  to  reflect  that,  on  the  whole,  they  sum  up  this  generation 
— Mark  Rutherford  and  Samuel  Butler,  I  mean.  — —  thinks 
their  faces  alike.  Are  they  ?  They  both  strip  their  thought 
naked  ;  at  least  old  Butler  thought  he  did,  but  he  often  put 
on  petticoats  of  wit  again,  without  knowing  it.  But  M.  R. 
has  suffered  so  much  more  in  his  heart,  and  S.  B.  in  his 
vanity,  that  the  analogy  has  to  stop. 

Yet  S.  B.  was  at  something  serious  even  when  he  most 
tried  to  shock — like  a  Frenchman  ;  and  he  had  a  passion 
for  truth — or  perhaps  it  was  a  loathing  for  falsehood,  rather 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  55 

a  different  thing  and  less  sympathetic  ?  M.  R.  had  the 
passion  for  truth. 

42 

I  am  particularly  grateful  for  Mark  Rutherford  in  this 
Valhalla.1  All  round  me  are  sprawling  the  inmates — the 
larvae  of  living  beings — who  literally  sit  all  day  doing 
nothing,  only  stirring  their  spines  when  they  hear  the  gong 
or  are  told  of  something  to  be  bought  cheaper  somewhere 
than  somewhere  else.  We  have  been  celebrating  the  Lord's 
Day  by  eating  more  and  better  than  on  other  days,  and  I 
am  writing  in  what  I  call  the  Cattery,  presided  over  by 
two  old  spinsters  (we  call  them  Castor  Oil  and  Pollux)  who 
look  as  if  they  were  holding  Life  in  their  pursed-up  mouths 
and  found  it  nasty,  but  were  too  genteel  to  put  it  out.  Now 
two  French  folk,  living,  I  think,  in  sin  for  purely  business 
purposes  (a  hairdresser's  firm  or  the  like),  are  quarrelling 
about  some  very  concrete  point  and  are  alive  enough  to  be 
refreshing ;  at  any  rate  they  do  mind  when  the  pepper- 
box doesn't  pepper.     (1913.) 

43 

It  seems  to  me  that  Mark  Rutherford  was  so  personal  a 
man  chiefly  from  his  dependence  on  human  sympathy,  and 
also  from  the  inrootedness  of  his  early  soaking  in  the  per- 
sonal religious  atmosphere  of  Evangelicalism  ;  and  that  he 
rather  confused  the  issues  of  the  word  '  personal '  and  stuck 
to  our  present  sense-bound — at  any  rate  limited — definition. 
But  if  we  believe  anything  to  be  beyond  us — as  I  do — 
we  must  believe  that  our  perception  of  the  personal  will 
change  ;  that  it  will  be,  perhaps,  nearer  to  what  we  now 
call  the  impersonal,  though  infinitely  warmer,  and  that  we 
shall  awake  in  its  likeness,  and  not  miss  what  we  now  feel 

1  [A  hotel.] 


56  NEW  AND  OLD 

as  if  we  should  miss  so  badly.  I  wish  we  had  more  words. 
The  essential  seems  to  me  the  truly  personal,  and  whatever 
there  is  of  essence  in  us  is  surely  here  and  now  immortal, 
much  more  then  and  there  as  well  as  here.     (1913.)] 

44 

I  find  Lady  Ponsonby,  the  wise  judge,  the  firm  Liberal, 
more  and  more  delightful.  At  last  one  feels  she  is  growing 
old — she  is  eighty-two.  She  is  like  a  fine  flame  kindled  by 
sea-logs  and  sandal-wood — good  to  watch  and  good  to 
warm  the  mind  at  and  the  heart  too. 

I  have  met  such  a  charming  Director  of  '  Le  vieux 
Colombier '  Company,  who  has  offered  me  seats  whenever 
I  go  to  Paris.  How  pleasant  it  is  to  talk  fluent  and  incom- 
prehensible bad  French  with  one  who  does  not  frown  or 
move  a  polite  muscle.     (March,  1914.) 

45 

I  am  a  heretic,  you  know,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  all  who 
call  Christ  Master  with  adoration  of  that  life  are  of  the  same 
band,  whatever  the  view  taken  of  the  manner  in  which 
that  life  came  to  us.  The  spiritual  miracle  of  it  was — is — 
greater  than  all  miracles,  as  Emily  Lawless  says  so  well ; 
and  it  has  never  seemed  to  me  that  whence  Christ  was  should 
so  trouble  men,  when  what  Christ  was  is  so  all-important, 
so  compelling,  so  life-filling.     (June,  1914.) 

46 

Humbly  and  passionately  I  dare  call  him  Master.  And  I 
can't  say  more  than  that.  The  immanence  of  God  and  the 
life  of  Christ  are  my  treasures.  They  warm  existence  and 
help  one's  worst  hours.  Buddha,  Socrates,  Mahomet,  all 
the  long  chain  of  revelations  of  God  so  dear  to  the  Broad 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  57 

Church  (and  rightly),  do  rank  for  mc  in  a  long  chain  of 
evolution,  but  they  seem  the  more  to  show  how  much 
greater,  warmer,  more  mysterious,  more  near  to  God  Christ 
was.    They  never  make  one  glow.     (July,  1914.) 


47 

[The  following  short  extracts  are  not  in  chronological  order. 
The  first  two  come  from  an  address  to  young  people  given 
in  1912,  the  rest  from  letters.] 

I  want  to  lay  stress  upon  the  importance  of  the  Graces, 
and  upon  their  sincerity.  They  arc  only  insincere  when 
they  express  nothing  behind  them  and  become  gentilities. 
But  gentilities  are  only  the  poor  relations  of  the  Graces. 
The  real  Graces  smooth  and  sweeten  life  as  much  as  the 
baskets  of  daffodils  and  hyacinths  at  the  street-corners 
in  the  spring-time.  They  are  generosities — something  that 
we  give  beyond  that  which  is  exacted  of  us  :  they  are  part 
of  the  fine  art  of  living. 

We  all  think  a  great  deal  now  of  the  health  of  our  bodies, 
and  of  the  importance  of  opening  our  windows  and  airing 
our  rooms.  I  wish  we  thought  as  much  of  airing  our 
imaginations.  To  me  poetry  is  just  like  that.  It  is  like 
opening  the  window  daily,  and  looking  out,  and  letting  in 
the  air  and  the  sunlight  into  an  otherwise  stuffy  little  room  ; 
and  if  I  cannot  read  some  poetry  in  the  day  I  feel  more 
uncomfortable  than  I  can  tell  you. 

What  a  curious  feeling  it  is  when  a  book  finds  you  out  and 
knows  you  better  than  your  family  and  friends  ! 

There  is  nothing  one  is  so  impatient  with  as  one's  own 
foibles  when  one  sees  them  in  others. 


58  NEW  AND  OLD 

I  feel  a  great  wish  to  see again,  only  probably  it  would 

not  be  so  nice.  Those  meetings  don't  repeat  themselves. 
A  strange  Maeterlinck-like  fact  about  intercourse  is  that 
people  never  know  when  they  really  do  something  for  one, 
because,  perhaps,  they  are  only  being  something  that  comes 
naturally  to  them  ;   deeds  are  so  often  cross. 

She  is  indeed  a  tangled  skein  of  shreds  of  immortality.  If 
one  could  only  unravel  her  and  wind  her  into  a  tiny  ball ! 

As  for  that  novel,  I  can  only  feel  again  that,  to  approach  the 
deepest  tragedies  in  humanity,  one  must  either  be  entirely 
and  diabolically  an  artist  and  the  heart  must  be  out  of  it, 
as  in  the  case  of  Maupassant  (and  then  one  hates  it),  or  must 
be  supremely  pitiful.  I  can't  bear  such  a  deep  gulf  sounded 
with  a  mere  fishing-rod  instead  of  with  a  plummet. 

It  seems  to  me  rather  curious  that  the  silent  worship  of  the 
Quakers  encloses  much  the  same  idea  as  a  passage  of  George 
Sand's  on  prayer — and  she  the  most  unquakerish  person 
that  ever  existed  !  She  never  feels  so  worshipful  as  when 
silence  is  made  for  her,  at  sunset  or  in  the  pauses  of  nature 
when  she  is  waiting  for  the  Fiat  of  God. 


xis 


[Christmas  Day.]  I  have  just  come  back  from  Church. 
As  I  heard  the  Athanasian  Creed  sung  in  the  highest  of 
spirits  in  that  prosperous  Church,  I  felt  life  rather  an  untidy 
hash  till  I  remembered  that  the  one  force  that  gave  it 
unity  was  Love,  and  that  Love  ran  through  the  day  and 
the  sordid  church,  and  through  all  that  was  best  inside 
those  sealskin- jacketed  Mamas  and  blowsy  old  gentlemen. 

All  the  clergymen  in  the  world  cannot  make  one  disbelieve 
in  God. 


EXTRACTS  FROM  LETTERS  59 

[Christmas  Bay.]  Surely,  surely,  however  Christ  is 
looked  upon,  if  the  life  be  looked  upon  at  all,  the  world 
may  rejoice  in  it  to-day,  in  the  ineffable  wisdom,  the  bound- 
less love  for  love's  sake,  the  deep  humility  which  alone  is 
true  dignity,  the  ideal  so  divine  and  so  human  that  it 
compels  sanctity.  Never  was  there  a  Personality  that  so 
consecrated  the  obvious  or  made  the  ideal  so  much  a 
matter  of  every  day. 

When  we  lose  ourselves  and  find  ourselves  we  find  God  ; 
and  negations,  like  death,  vanish  before  Him.  We  seem 
to  find  Him  in  such  strange  ways — in  the  lowest  depths  as 
much  as  in  the  highest  heights— through  badness,  through 
goodness — any  way  so  long  as  it  is  real. 

Tennyson  is  a  great  witness  to  immortality,  for  he  has 
passed  through  the  high  tide  of  sorrow  and  sees  things  as 
they  are.  He  is  a  seer  seeing,  not  only  a  poetic  soul  dallying 
with  truth,  all  feeling  and  no  reason.  Perhaps  it  is  when 
the  heart  thinks  that  the  greatest  truths  are  come  by  ;  at 
any  rate  it  is  the  men  who  have  written  their  conviction 
straight  from  the  fire  of  pain  that  are  the  best  comrades  in 
grief. 

The  only  comfort,  I  should  say  the  only  rampart,  is  one's 
passionate  conviction  of  an  Infinite  Mystery,  of  the  truth 
we  dare  not  profane  by  intimate  explanation, — that  loss 
of  life  here  may  mean  gain  of  fuller  and  intenser  life  there, 
in  the  next  stage  towards  God  ;  that  Carlyle's  '  Everlasting 
Yea '  is  affirmative  and  therefore  Life,  and  not '  der  Geist 
der  stets  vemeint '  and  therefore  destruction  ;  and  that 
the  very  powers  of  enjoyment  and  vividness  which  give 
the  sting  to  death  may  be  the  powers  which  alone  can  give 
full  realisation  of  the  free-er,  less  entangled,  life  that  our 
beloveds  even  now  are  leading. 


60  NEW  AND  OLD 

I  can  only  pray  for  you — not  that  He  will  take  away  the 
pain  which  is  part  of  love  and  the  tax  of  mortality,  but 
that  He  may  give  you  His  and  your  best  consolation,  the 
life  of  love  with  all  it  brings,  compared  to  which  all  else  is 
as  the  '  shadow  of  a  magnitude.' 

Grief  is  a  most  sacred  possession  and  belongs  to  the  back 
of  one's  soul,  and  becomes  part  of  one,  behind  life,  a  holy 
place  where  one  can  sit  apart.  And,  to  '  make  the  best  of 
life,'  one  must  remember  Death,  for  that  means  Love  and 
memory.  Do  what  one  will,  Death  has  so  much  of  one's 
'  best '  that  one  dare  not  touch  life  without  it. 

Grief  is  a  strange  country— is  it  not  ? — with  its  own  ebb 
and  flow,  its  own  radiance  from  the  past,  so  that  some  days, 
those  upon  which  one  lights  on  a  forgotten  memory,  seem 
almost  festal,  like  summer. 

How  the  happiness  of  those  we  have  loved  and  lost  grows 
more  and  more  vital  to  us,  their  unhappiness  less  !  I 
suppose  it  is  happiness  which  is  real  life,  and  we  must  will 
through  to  it  even  here. 


THOUGHTS1 


We  should  rather  be  Life's  good  comrades  than  its  passion- 
ate lovers  ;  neither  easily  offended,  nor  imagining  evil,  yet 
not  taking  its  affairs  too  lightly.  Let  us  hold  Life  faithfully 
by  the  hand,  loving  it  through  fair  and  ill  repute  ;  as  good 
travellers,  grumbling  little,  praising  much,  and  sharing 
sun  and  shadow  and  wayside  inns. 


Life  exacts  good  manners.  If  we  importune  her  with 
demands,  she  treats  us  like  poor  relations.  If  we  smile  at 
her  coldness,  she  smiles  back  again. 


The  art  of  living  is  an  effort  to  gain  style,  to  know  where 
to  express  and  where  restrain.  In  this  we  only  follow 
Nature,  who  strives  to  win  beauty  and  order  by  unceasing 
experiments  in  giving  forth  and  in  elimination. 

4 

Mind  is  the  best  screen  to  hold  between  the  emotions  and 
life. 

* 

1  [These  are  taken  from  two  notebooks,  and,  as  far  as  might  be,  arranged. 
See  Introduction,  p.  5.] 

61 


62  NEW  AND  OLD 


In  a  changeful  world,  a  person  with  an  unchanging  heart 
has  no  choice  but  to  become  a  poet  or  a  bore. 

6 

Youth  goes  ;   childhood  need  never  be  lost. 


In  youth  there  is  a  period  of  discomfort,  because  then  the 
whole  battery  of  a  man's  energies,  meant  for  many,  is 
directed  upon  himself. 

8 

Whilst  we  walk  through  the  Valley  of  Youth,  its  beauty, 
its  variety,  its  pleasant  greensward  and  dancing  lights  and 
shadows,  make  us  forget  that  it  lies  low.  As  we  climb  into 
Middle  Age  the  road  is  steep,  but  we  know  that  each  step 
takes  us  nearer  the  sun. 

9 

The  power  of  being  amused  is  the  power  of  middle-age, 
and  to  be  content  with  being  amused  where  we  should  once 
have  intensely  enjoyed  is  the  first  sign  that  youth  is  past. 

10 

The  aim  of  middle  life  should  be  to  cut  one's  coat  accord- 
ing to  one's  cloth.  The  point  is  to  be  a  good  tailor  and  to 
have  a  distinguished  cut. 

11 

(For  my  thirtieth  birthday.) 

It  is  not  enough  to  accept  the  present ;  we  should  welcome 
it  with  hospitality. 


THOUGHTS  G3 

12 

(For  my  fortieth  birthday.) 

Life  is  sometimes  delightful,  often  disgusting,  always 
infinitely  worth  living. 

13 

It  is  more  difficult  to  love  well  as  we  grow  older.  Our 
conception  of  love  becomes  bigger  and  our  sensibility  acuter, 
because  they  are  no  longer  blinded  by  the  glorious  egoism 
of  youth. 

14 

The.  person  who  only  regards  one  Tense  of  Life  is  bound 
in  some  degree  to  lose  sanity. 

15 

The  dangerous  moment  in  life  comes  when  men  begin  to 
over-value  the  past  at  the  expense  of  the  present.  It  is  the 
moment  for  religious  controversies,  for  ancestor-worship, 
for  narrowing  in,  for  exalting  one  set  of  people  and  excluding 
another.  When  we  reach  it,  it  means  that  we  are  growing 
old.     But  we  need  never  reach  it. 

*     * 

* 

16 
You  must  have  been  happy  before  you  can  give  happiness. 

17 

When  happiness  has  once  sat  upon  the  hearth,  the  fire 
is  always  alight. 

18 

The  secret  of  happiness,  as  of  art,  lies  in  circumscription, 
in  the  power  to  confine  an  infinite  idea  within  right  limits. 


64  NEW  AND  OLD 

Men  must  learn  to  restrain  happiness  within  the  boundaries 
of  pleasure,  as  surely  as  music  and  poetry  are  fenced  in  by 
the  laws  of  composition.  But  confinement  must  not  be- 
come imprisonment,  or  the  idea  will  lose  life  and  stiffen 
into  formalism. 

19 

The  most  mortal  blunders  in  life  arise  from  the  confusion 
of  pleasure  with  happiness. 

20 

Enjoyment  should  not  be  the  screen  by  which  we  shelter 
our  eyes  from  the  light,  but  the  sunshine  which  warms  our 
blood. 

21 

Enjoyment  lies  in  a  sense  of  the  value  of  what  is  enjoyed  ; 
it  implies  the  power  of  seriousness.  Frivolity  implies  an 
ignorance  of  enjoyment,  together  with  the  show  of  it. 

*     * 

* 

22 

Les  hommes  marchent,  les  femmes  sautent.  Elles  arrivent 
done  plus  vite  au  bout,  mais  en  ne  se  rendant  pas  compte 
du  chemin. 

23 

II  y  a  une  difference  profonde  entre  les  amities  des  hommes 
et  celles  des  femmes.  Les  hommes  sont  lies  par  leurs 
plaisirs,  les  femmes  par  leurs  chagrins. 

24 

C'est  peut-etre  une  ordonnance  de  Dieu  que  les  femmes  ne 
peuvent  etre  Pretres,  puisqu' elles  ont  deja,  un  peu  trop,  la 
nature  des  Pretres,  et  par  leurs  qualites  et  par  leurs  defauts. 


THOUGHTS  65 

Les  femmes  naissent  le  plus  souvent  directrices  devouees, 
casuistes  exaltees.  Les  meilleures  sont  nees  avec  le  besoin 
d'ecouter  les  confessions,  de  guerir,  d'aider,  de  veiller  sur 
les  ames.  Dieu  lcur  en  a  donne  un  brevet  naturel.  II  ne 
veut  pas  qu'clles  se  formalisent,  qu'elles  se  petrissent  dans 
une  hierarchic 

25 

When  good  women  love  power  they  generally  confound  it 
with  the  power  of  doing  good. 

26 

The  art  of  painting  does  not  offer  women  the  same  kind 
of  opportunity  for  their  special  endowments — those  of  critics 
and  interpreters  rather  than  of  originators — as  that  of  poetry, 
intense  and  personal  poetry,  and  of  novel-writing  ;  still  less 
does  music. 

* 

27 

There  are  two  sorts  of  people,  those  who  want  to  be  like 
their  kind  and  those  who  want  to  be  different  from  it. 

28 

Some  people  add  to  the  depth  of  life,  others  to  its  bright- 
ness. And  brightness  is  not  necessarily  more  shallow  than 
the  depths — only  more  accessible. 

29 

Some  people  are  like  life-buoys,  and  weather  the  storm 
by  dancing  over  the  waves  ;  others  are  like  the  spars  of  a 
wreck  lying  tragically  in  mid-ocean  for  others  to  cling  to. 
But  more  men  are  helped  by  the  life-buoy,  and  wisdom  is 
with  the  dancers. 

E 


66  NEW  AND  OLD 

30 

Every  deep  nature  has  its  stupidity,  but  to  be  absolutely 
clever  is  to  be  shallow-souled.  The  world  wounded  Pascal 
when  it  made  Voltaire  laugh. 

31 

There  are  people  who  always  want  to  cut  your  coat 
according  to  their  cloth. 

32 

Dull  people  are  without  an  atmosphere.  Therefore 
persons  (among  them  many  philanthropists)  who  are  all 
character  and  no  temperament  are  often  the  dullest  of  all. 

33 

II  y  a  des  personnes  comme  des  albums,  dans  lesquels  tout 
le  monde  ecrit.  Tout  le  monde  croit  aimer  Palbum,  tandis 
qu'en  verite  il  n'aime  que  ce  qu'il  y  a  inscrit. 

34 

Small  people  make  small  things  into  mysteries  and  explain 
away  the  mystery  of  big  things. 

35 

To  the  superficial  everything  is  superficial. 

36 
There  is  nothing  that  cannot  be  imagined  by  people  of 


no  imagination. 


37 


Civilisation    provides    a    vast    apparatus   of    mechanical 
facilities  for  the  unimaginative. 


THOUGHTS  67 

38 

It  is  dangerous  to  sanity  when  perceptive  people  have  no 
imagination. 

39 

Frivolity  is  the  art  of  avoiding  set  ties  and  lasting  emotions. 

40 

Educated  people  often  deceive  themselves  and  others  by 
putting  business  as  a  screen  between  their  eyesight  and 
reality.  A  Committee  may  be  as  frivolous  as  a  gaming- 
table. 

41 

Work  is  a  natural  appetite  of  mankind  ;  even  the  most 
frivolous  make  a  business  of  pleasure. 

*     * 
* 

42 

It  is  the  intellectual  and  the  frivolous  who  feel  the  need 
of  conversation.  The  majority — the  practical — seek  col- 
leagues rather  than  friends. 

43 

Talkers  may  be  divided  into  those  who  wish  to  be  amused 
and  those  who  wish  to  be  interested.  If  the  two  moods 
clash  friction  or  boredom  must  ensue. 

44 

The  power  of  self-expression  is  the  essential  thing  in 
intercourse  ;   language  is  only  the  lesser  part  of  it. 

45 

Free-trade  in  intercourse  is  the  only  law  of  companion- 
ship.    A  bore  is  a  person  who  breaks  it. 


68  NEW  AND  OLD 

46 

There  is  nothing  that  can  spring  such  a  gulf  between  one 
man  and  another  as  a  laugh ;  nothing  that  can  so  bridge 
it  over  as  a  tear. 

47 

Laughter  partakes  of  the  nature  of  what  is  laughed  at. 

*  * 
* 

48 

If  we  take  people  wisely  as  they  are,  we  go  far  towards 
making  them  what  they  should  be. 

49 

Too  much  admiration  judges  more  truly  of  character 
than  too  much  severity.  The  former  wakens  possibilities  of 
good  ;  the  latter  rouses  faults  that  need  never  have  appeared. 

50 

In  philanthropy  one  must  go  on  believing  oneself  to  be 
of  use  in  order  to  become  so,  on  the  same  principle  that 
one  pursues  in  religion,  acting  its  central  truths  as  if  they 
had  already  been  proved,  and  thus  alone  verifying  them. 

*  * 
* 

51 

The  danger  of  the  enthusiastic  temperament  is  an  un- 
conscious exactingness  from  the  bodies  and  spirits  of  others. 
The  danger  of  the  lymphatic  temperament  is  to  confound 
philosophy  with  indifference,  and  calm  with  a  shrinking 
from  emotion.  The  best  things  in  the  world  spring  from 
the  union  of  both  elements  in  one  person. 


THOUGHTS  69 

52 

A  man's  most  dangerous  fortress  is  his  arm-chair,  his 
most  dangerous  moment  when  he  has  no  wish  while  sitting 
in  it. 

53 

The  calm  which  is  reposeful  is  the  calm  of  victory.  It  is 
force  at  rest. 

54 

Stillness  is  a  force  when  it  implies  poise  ;  otherwise  it  is 
stagnation. 

55 

Most  people  who  think  that  they  love  liberty  love  no 
more  than  the  choice  of  their  chain. 

56 

He  who  really  loves  liberty  must  walk  alone. 

57 

The  service  of  an  idea  is  cloistral.  It  needs  vocation  ; 
it  needs  the  austerity  of  a  novitiate  to  prove  its  reality. 

58 

The  only  practical  man  is  he  who  can  attempt  the 
impossible. 

59 

Moving  off  the  rails  may  be  better  than  not  moving  at  all. 

60 

The  man  who  is  in  the  swim  is  one  who  does  not  get  out 
of  his  depth.  He  is  concerned  with  his  own  strokes  and 
with  the  current.  The  drowning  man  knows  more  of  the 
waters  beneath,  and  of  the  sky  above  his  head. 


70  NEW  AND  OLD 

61 

Those  who  depend  on  what  '  people  '  think,  depend  on 
the  thought  of  those  who  do  not  think. 

62 

Les  bien-pensants  sont  sou  vent  ceux  qui  ne  pensent  pas. 

63 

What  we  do  not  believe  is  of  no  importance.  The  secret 
of  life  is  to  discover  what  we  believe. 

64 

The  part  of  a  man's  beliefs  which  is  based  upon  disillu- 
sion is  not  the  valuable  part  of  them. 

65 

A  cynic  is  one  who  assigns  unworthy  causes  to  great 
things. 

66 

Some  men  are  born  and  some  are  made  cynics.  The 
natural  cynic  is  far  worse  to  deal  with  than  the  man  who  has 
become  one  through  disappointment.  La  Rochefoucauld 
was  more  immovable  than  Swift. 

* 

67 

Hope  is  Faith  in  action. 

68 

The  world  is  riddled  by  fear.  Men  fear  their  souls  and 
their  bodies  ;  they  fear  Love  and  God.  The  laws  of  morality 
only  mean  extended  fear,  and  the  earth  will  not  grow  better 
until  fear  turns  into  love. 


THOUGHTS  71 

69 

Most  of  the  confusions  of  life  spring  from  a  wrong  use  of 
the  verb  must. 

70 

Morality  is  the  grammar  of  goodness. 

71 

Goodness  is  bound  to  strain  at  the  leash  of  morality  till 
it  learns  how  to  lead. 

72 

Preventive  religion,  the  religion  of  fear,  is  a  primitive 
form  of  faith  bound  to  break  before  enlightenment.  Be- 
tween its  fall  and  the  dawn  of  incentive  religion,  the  religion 
of  love,  there  must  be  a  time  of  moral  disintegration.  After 
the  Middle  Ages  came  the  Renaissance  ;    after  Puritanism 

the  Restoration. 

*     * 
* 

73 

We  can  tell  a  man  by  his  friends  as  surely  as  we  can  not 
tell  him  by  his  loves. 

74 

In  friendship  everything  and  nothing  must  be  taken  for 
granted. 

75 

To  those  who  come  to  stay  in  our  hearts  we  can  offer  no 
less  than  our  best ;   and  our  best  is  the  truth. 

76 
(Of  friendship.) 
What  was,  is.     What  is  not,  can  never  be.     What  shall 

be,  was. 

*     * 
* 


72  NEW  AND  OLD 

77 

The  world  would  be  a  different  place  if  we  realised  that 
Love  is  the  most  austere  discipline  of  Life  as  well  as  its 
sweetest  balm. 

78 

Great  hearts  should  remember  that  their  hunger  is  due 
to  their  own  voracity,  not  to  the  deficiency  of  others.  A 
genius  for  Love,  like  any  other  genius,  must  be  content  to 
exist  for  its  own  sake,  not  for  what  it  receives.  Love  must 
be  for  ever  loving  or  it  would  be  miserable.  This  is  the 
treaty  it  has  made  with  happiness,  and  happiness  honestly 
keeps  the  bargain. 

79 

When  we  cry  out  that  we  have  loved  too  much,  it  is  a  sign 
that  we  love  too  little. 

80 

Love  is  of  little  help  unless  you  can  draw  small  cheques 
upon  it. 

*     * 
* 

81 

The  work  of  religion  is  to  clear  the  will  of  desires  and  to 
set  it  free. 

82 

There  are  two  conceptions  of  religion  :  that  which  adapts 
God  to  the  needs  of  man ;  that  which  fashions  man  to  the 
needs  of  God. 

83 

Poetry  and  religion  are  truer  than  fact,  because  they 
attest  the  solidarity  of  life,  and  its  permanence,  through  love. 


THOUGHTS  73 

84 

The  confusion  of  truth  with  fact  is  at  the  root  of  most  of 
the  mischief  in  the  world. 

85 

There  are  men  who  always  believe  that  a  measure  can 
kill  an  idea. 

86 

The  poor  man  who  sacrifices  his  food  rather  than  go 
without  his  Music-hall  is  a  misguided  witness  to  the 
dominance  of  spirit  over  matter. 

87 

Men  talk  as  if  reality  were  outside  us,  as  if  it  were  more 
real  to  make  shoes  than  to  write  books.  But  reality  comes 
from  within  :  it  is  what  we  bring  to  life  :  it  is  the  currency 
of  experience. 

88 

Sorrow  does  not  really  change  people,  it  only  develops 
what  is  already  in  them  :   that  which  they  bring  to  it  they 

will  reap  from  it. 

*     * 
* 

89 

Life  lies  in  experience,  not  in  movement.  To-day  we 
are  too  apt  to  reduce  life  to  movement,  and  our  art  is  bound 
to  grow  narrower  and  more  external — dependent  upon 
science  rather  than  upon  ideas. 

90 

It  might  be  well  for  the  modern  realist  to  remember  that 
literalness  is  not  the  same  as  truth,  nor  curiosity  as  courage. 


74  NEW  AND  OLD 

91 

Art  is  an  attempt  to  wrest  what  is  permanent  out  of  the 
transitoriness  of  things.  The  attempt  to  arrest  what  is 
transitory  kills  art  and  makes  journalism. 

92 

The  aesthete  and  the  artist  are  often  hostile  one  to  another. 
The  aesthete  depends  upon  externals,  the  artist  upon  the 
inner  life  as  well  as  the  outer.  The  artist  at  work  reacts 
upon  his  surroundings  ;  he  is  free.  The  aesthete  is  the 
passive  prey  of  his  impressions. 

93 

Fastidiousness  is  a  kind  of  asceticism  of  the  intellect. 
Men  can  be  as  austere  from  taste  as  from  religion. 

94 

The  ugliness  that  comes  from  an  individual  way  of  seeing, 
or  from  the  absence  of  adequate  means,  is  attractive  :  it 
is  disinterested.  The  ugliness  that  comes  of  a  general  way 
of  living,  or  from  the  use  of  superfluous  means,  is  repellent, 
and  it  is  utilitarian.  The  one  is  grotesque,  the  other  vulgar. 
There  is  a  difference  between  the  gargoyle  and  the  advertise- 
ment. 

95 

An  inspiring  human  being,  rich  in  instinct,  is  often  an 
excellent  writer  who  yet  wholly  lacks  the  vital  spark  of 
spontaneity  ;  while  others,  in  life  elaborate  or  inhuman, 
become  natural  and  convincing  when  they  write.  Litera- 
ture is  their  element,  their  emotion.  They  make  good 
creators  and  shocking  lovers. 

96 

There  are  two  kinds  of  literary  creator  :  there  is  the 
creative  writer  and  there  is  the  creative  reader.  The  creative 
reader  is  the  true  critic :   he  sees  all  he  reads  anew. 


POEMS 

1 
GRASSE 

The  milk-white  town  comes  climbing, 

Climbing  over  the  hill, 
With  a  grace  that  is  past  the  rhyming, 

And  smiles  at  its  own  sweet  will ; 
The  crystal  dawn  rejoices, 

The  cock  crows  silver-shrill, 
And  a  din  of  sweet  small  noises 

Wakes  up  where  all  was  still. 

The  dewy  sounds  of  labour 

Arise  most  debonair ; 
The  bell  calls  each  good  neighbour 

To  say  his  morning  prayer  ; 
The  faithful  hammer's  clinking 

Rings  out  a  measured  beat, 
And  the  daisies  open  blinking 

Amongst  the  young  green  wheat. 

The  little  red  roofs,  they  quiver 

In  the  golden  light  of  noon, 
And  the  lowly  voice  of  the  river 

Is  heard  both  late  and  soon  ; 
A  jocund  noise  of  laughing 

Rings  up  the  sunny  street, 
Where  the  burghers  sit  a-quaffing 

And  sing  that  life  is  sweet. 


75 


76  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  black-stoled  priests  come  sweeping 

Adown  the  moss-grown  stair, 
Where  the  market-place  lies  sleeping 

In  the  shining  evening  air  ; 
And  old  age  steals  a-creeping 

Whilst  two  grey  gossips  croon, 
And  the  children  rush  home  leaping 

By  the  light  of  the  rising  moon. 

Two  tardy  nuns  step-keeping 

Come  wagging  their  holy  heads, 
And  a  white-souled  star  out-peeping 

Will  light  them  to  their  beds. 
The  reaper  leaves  his  reaping, 

The  lambkins  go  to  rest, 
And  a  young  bird  rustles  cheeping 

To  its  olive-cradled  nest. 

But,  as  day's  hum  dies,  sinking 

Below  the  great  red  sun, 
The  little  gold  lights  come  winking 

And  flash  out  one  by  one  ; 
Sweet  day  in  grey  is  hooding, 

There  's  not  a  soul  that  frets, 
And  over  all  is  brooding 

The  breath  of  violets. 


1888. 


A  SONATA  OF  BEETHOVEN'S 

Who  knoweth  whence  we  come  and  what  we  are  ? 
This  Man  of  Music  had  eternal  eyes, 
And  on  these  wings  of  Melody  there  lies 
The  echo  of  an  answer  from  afar. 


POEMS  77 

It  tells  how  round  a  Soul  stand  mists  of  morn, 

And  still  it  knoweth  not  the  morning  nigh, 

But  gropes  through  doubts  and  does  not  see  the  sky, 

Yet  travels  to  the  East  where  it  was  born  ; 

And  how  that  Soul  is  purified  by  Pain, 

And,  learning  perfect  Love,  forgetteth  Fear ; 

Still  soars  and  loves,  half-free  ;   yearns  once  again  ; 

Then  turns  to  flame  celestial,  crystal-clear, 

And,  standing  rapt  beyond  our  Now  and  Here, 

Cries  out  to  men  to  suffer  and  attain. 

1888. 

3 
A  WISH 

Death,  when  I  die,  in  Autumn  let  it  be, 

In  Autumn  when  across  the  spiky  furze 

There  floats  the  film  of  silver  gossamers  ; 

In  early  Autumn,  when  the  cherry-tree 

Is  touched  with  flame,  the  beech  with  russet  gold, 

And  o'er  the  fallow  field  and  purple  lea 

The  starlings  scream,  and  swallows  put  to  sea, 

And  woolly  mists  hang  light  on  wood  and  wold  ; 

Now  when  no  sound  is  heard,  unless  it  were 

The  thud  of  acorns  on  the  wrinkled  earth, 

While  thoughts  of  summer  linger  in  the  air 

Sweet  with  the  smell  of  apples  ;   now  when  Mirth 

Is  grey  as  Grief,  and  Peace  is  everywhere, 

Bring  me,  O  Death,  into  the  arms  of  Birth. 


1896. 


4 

The  Path  of  Love  is  made  for  twain  ; 

Hate  walketh  not  alone  : 
The  Path  of  Death  and  the  Path  of  Pain 

Are  only  trod  by  one. 


78  NEW  AND  OLD 

Yet  he  who  hath  ta'en  the  Path  of  Pain 

Hath  found  both  friend  and  foe  ; 
The  depths  of  weakness,  the  power  of  meekness, 

The  strength  to  overthrow. 

1902. 


5 
AFTER  MARY  COLERIDGE'S  DEATH 

A  late  day  of  summer  is  over ; 

It  has  not  been  long. 
The  bee  has  gone  out  of  the  clover ; 

Hushed  is  the  song. 

Yet  the  sweetness  grows  sweeter  and  lingers, 

While  the  form  of  it  dies  ; 
And  the  song  does  not  cease  with  the  singers, 

Though  night  close  their  eyes. 

When  dark  falls  a  light  shines  the  stronger, 

A  flame  burns  more  clear ; 
The  day  would  grow  grey  were  it  longer — 

It  is  past — it  is  here. 

1907. 

6 

IN  THE  STATUE-HALL  AT  THE  LOUVRE 

The  generations  of  the  dead, 

White  and  free  and  very  still, 

Wait  us  in  infinite  halls,  until 

We  too  grow  strangely  quieted. 

Their  number  who  stand  above  good  and  ill, 

Their  measureless  number  who  hath  said  ? 


POEMS  79 

For  each  of  these  did  the  salt  tears  flow, 

And  the  head  was  bowed  and  the  heart  was  sore, 

Hundreds  and  thousands  of  years  ago, 

Hundreds  and  thousands  of  years  and  more  : 

Yet  we  are  weeping  for  one  as  though 

No  man  had  ever  wept  before. 


1907. 


7 

MEMORY 

The  memory  of  that  which  was 

Floats  like  a  water-lily  leaf 

Over  the  tideless  depth  of  grief, 

Dark  and  cold  and  still  as  glass, 

There  where  no  change  can  ever  pass, 

Where  shadows  are  long  and  light  is  brief. 

The  living  thought  of  the  days  gone  by, 
With  roots  deep  down  below  the  deeps, 
Gently  rocks  and  gently  sleeps, 
Shining  and  green  where  the  waters  lie, 
Until  to  him  who  vigil  keeps 
What  was  is  the  life  that  cannot  die. 


8 
DEATH  AND  THE  DAWN 

Damp  and  dying  and  dark 

Was  the  night ; 
Closely  shrouded  and  stark 

Lay  the  light : 
And  the  tale  of  the  stars  was  told, 

Save  for  a  tremulous  spark 


1907. 


80  NEW  AND  OLD 

In  a  streak  of  misty  white. 

The  earth  was  heavy  and  cold 
As  a  mourner's  heart,  and  the  sight 

Of  the  dawn  seemed  far  from  the  wold. 

When — from  the  deeps  of  the  dew 

And  the  dark, 
Sudden,  up,  out  of  view, 

Shot  the  lark. 
Swift  as  a  flame  she  flew 

To  her  invisible  mark, 
Swift  as  a  soul  that  knew 

Where  the  dawn  would  be : 
The  lark  pierced  through  to  the  blue 

And  the  soul  was  free. 


1908. 


9 

THE  LAVENDER  HEDGE 

All  day  long  like  things  of  light, 
All  day  long  without  noise  or  stir, 
Flutter  and  float  the  butterflies  white 
Over  the  hedge  of  lavender. 
Blue  is  the  sky,  a  milky  blue, 
Silvery  blue  is  the  lavender  too, 
Sweeter  than  honey,  richer  than  myrrh. 

Poets'  souls  are  the  butterflies  white, 
Dancing  spirits  come  from  afar, 
Come  from  the  land  of  lost  delight 
Where  all  the  ancient  raptures  are  ; 
Poets  return  to  float  and  fly 
Over  a  blossoming  memory, 
Over  a  hedge  of  lavender. 

Hambledon,  1908. 


'a1- 


POEMS  81 

10 

TRIANON 

The  hand  of  Autumn  rests  upon 

The  dreaming  woods  of  Trianon  ; 

On  silver  birch  and  on  beech  turned  gold, 

The  woods  of  pleasure  long  since  grown  old, 

And  of  youth  still  playing  at  games  that  are  dead 

On  a  floor  strewn  thick  with  brown  and  red, 

Where  Death  himself  cannot  fall  cold 

Or  lay  him  down  in  a  quiet  bed. 

For  here,  where  white  mists  rise  from  the  mould, 

Young  Love  once  stopped  in  the  midst  of  a  song, 

And  Life  broke  off  in  a  tale  half-told 

Before  Life  knew  that  the  tale  was  wrong. 

And  now  nought  stays  but  a  floating  swan 

To  guard  the  silence  of  Trianon. 

October  1913. 

11 

And  I,  who  know  what  Love,  what  Beauty  is, 
I  might  have  been  a  poet,  might  have  told 
Of  all  the  pain  and  all  the  summer  bliss 
Earth  and  the  heart  contain  a  thousandfold. 
I  might  have  been  a  poet  but  for  this, 
That  He  who  fashions  spirits  did  withhold 
The  final  tip  of  flame — the  flame  all  His — 
Which  turneth  thought  to  words  of  molten  gold. 
For  ever  must  I  aim,  for  ever  miss, 
Wanting  the  gift  that 's  neither  bought  nor  sold. 
Yet  have  I  that  which  frees  from  Life's  caprice, 
And  makes  the  day  fresh  and  the  footstep  bold  ; 
Mine  are  the  dreams  that  bring  a  central  peace, 
And  mine  the  joy  that  never  can  grow  old. 

1901. 

F 


GLADYS   LEONORA   PRATT 

The  existence  of  Gladys  Leonora  Pratt  was  a  series  of  dull 
dislocated  sensations.  She  led  a  '  gay  life,'  as  it  was  called 
in  her  professional  terminology ;  and  she  led  it  in  a  dirty 
little  room  with  a  curtained  window  that  would  not  open, 
at  259  Brecon  Street,  Euston,  a  dingy  narrow  street  that 
ended  in  a  blind  wall.  The  dull  sensations  were  many,  but 
there  was  no  thread  to  bind  them  together  or  give  them 
sequence  ;  she  did  not  know  the  reason  why  she  did  this 
or  that,  unless  it  were  to  eat  or  drink  or  get  warm.  She 
could  not  count  upon  herself  from  one  hour  to  another  ;  she 
was  the  prey  of  each  passing  impression ;  and  she  felt  no 
wish  to  be  different.  Her  consciousness  indeed  was  like 
a  sheet — none  too  white — across  which  were  thrown,  now 
blurred,  now  clearer,  a  number  of  incoherent  lantern-slides. 
Among  them,  it  is  true,  there  were  some  more  vivid  than  the 
rest — spots  of  light  which  punctuated  the  dead  level  of  the 
days  ;  but  what  these  particular  images  were  Gladys  Leonora 
alone  could  tell,  and,  as  far  as  may  be,  she  must  tell  them 
for  herself. 

There  were  the  evenings  when  your  '  chap  '  took  you  to 
the  picture  palaces,  or  to  the  halls,  or  to  some  theatre  over 
the  river,  where  a  lovely  lady  in  yellow  satin,  a  real  lady,  just 
like  the  poster  on  the  hoardings,  committed  a  real  crime. 
And  the  night  would  end  up  with  a  drink  in  a  jolly  bar, 
brilliant  with  electric  light,  where  every  one  forgot  drab 
to-morrow  and  drab  yesterday  ;  and  sometimes  you  danced 
and  men  were  sweet  on  you,  although  they  were  not  always 
pleasant,  until  your  own  chap  grew  jealous  and  hit  you — 

82 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  83 

only  you  didn't  know  much  what  happened  till  next  morn- 
ing. Or  sometimes  he  was  in  a  good  mood  and  gave  you  a 
set  of  glass  beads,  or  cigarettes,  or  some  liquorice  sweets  ; 
or  Mother  Mack,  '  her  wot  keeps  the  house,'  was  in  a  good 
temper  and  cooked  a  currant  pudding  for  dinner,  and  you 
had  the  taste  of  it  in  your  mouth  long  afterwards.  And  then 
there  were  the  bad  hours,  equally  distinct  on  the  lantern 
sheet.  In  the  first  place  there  were  your  fears — shapeless, 
indefinite  terrors  which  jumped  out  upon  you,  you  didn't 
know  how,  and  made  you  feel  sick  and  scream.  You  got 
them  when  you  were  alone  in  the  dark,  or  in  hot  close  weather 
and  in  thunderstorms,  or  when  you  had  had  nobody  to  talk 
to  for  some  time.  And  there  were  the  days  when  your  chap 
came  home  drunk  and  gave  you  a  black  eye  ;  or  when  Mother 
Mack  was  in  a  bad  temper  and  starved  you  ;  or,  worse 
still,  when  the  weather  was  bad  and  you  '  got  no  work,'  and 
brought  no  one  home,  and  she  beat  you,  and  you  had  the 
hump. 

And  then  there  were  other  slides — pictures,  some  of  them, 
from  times  remoter  and  more  confused  ;  but  those  pictures 
were  the  strongest  of  all.  They  were  very  few,  though. 
There  was  a  wood  of  blue-bells  where  you  had  seen  a  big 
butterfly  :  it  was  at  home  when  you  were  eight,  and  it  was 
near  Stroud.  And  there  was  a  pearl  necklace  you  had  once 
caught  sight  of  on  the  neck  of  a  Jewess  who  was  looking  out 
of  a  window  over  a  tailor's  shop  in  the  Charing  Cross  Road. 
And  there  was  a  child  with  fair  curls  that  ran  to  you  in  the 
street,  because  it  took  you  for  its  mother.  And  there  was  a 
big  fight  in  Hampstead  Road,  when  young  Muriel's  bloke 
licked  old  Lily's  bloke,  and  '  Golly,  it  was  a  bloody  game.' 
And  there  were  those  words, '  Far,  far  away,'  from  the  poetry 
piece  you  once  learned  at  school,  that  came  into  your  head, 
you  couldn't  say  why,  and  went  on  sounding  there  like  a 
tune — but  it  made  you  feel  nice  and  comfortable.  And  there 
was  the  teacher  with  the  blue  eyes — at  school  too — the  one 


84  NEW  AND  OLD 

you  thought  so  sweetly  pretty.  And  there  was  your  chum 
at  the  beginning  '  here,'  Sally  Riley,  who  was  taken  off  to 
'  the  Castle  '  (Quod,  that  is)  as  a  '  drunk  and  disorderly,' 
and  had  to  wear  a  cap  and  number  ;  and  her  it  was  wot  told 
you  how  dreadful  it  was  not  to  talk  or  hear  no  noise,  and  how 
it  made  you  scream.  And,  of  course,  there  was  your  mother 
— but  she  gave  you  an  odd  feeling  when  you  thought  of  her. 
You  didn't  want  to,  and  yet  you  did.  You  were  so  proud 
of  having  a  respectable  mother,  different  from  most  of  the 
girls ;  but  you  couldn't  bear  to  think  of  her  ;  and  you  couldn't 
really  remember  her,  because  she  died  when  you  were  nine ; 
only  you  knew  she  had  a  terrible  cough.  And  you  knew, 
too,  she  had  stuck  to  your  father,  though  he  had  never  kept 
his  word  to  marry  her  and  was  cruel  bad  to  her.  And  after 
she  died — and  before  it — he  brought  back  strange  women 
with  loud  laughs,  who  carried  on  with  him,  and  were  fearful 
unkind  to  you  ;  till  one  day  you  were  sick  of  it  all,  and  you 
had  a  young  man  of  your  own,  and  you  stayed  out  late  with 
him  two  nights,  and  your  father  gave  you  a  hiding,  and 
the  third  night  you  were  afraid  of  going  home  (home  was 
Marylebone  way),  and  your  bloke  treated  you  at  the  '  Angel,' 
and  you  got  pretty  well  screwed,  and  you  laughed  a  good 
deal  and  said  '  yes  '  to  all  he  asked,  and  you  remembered 
nothing  more  and  woke  up  '  here.'  And  '  here  '  you  had 
stayed  ever  since,  you  didn't  quite  know  how  long,  only 
when  you  came  it  was  before  Christmas,  and  now  Christmas 
was  past  again.  (That  last  picture  was  longer  than  a  picture 
— it  was  a  memory,  one  of  the  very  few  in  Gladys  Leonora's 
possession.) 

And  after  the  first  strangeness — you  were  frightened  and 
excited  for  a  week — it  didn't  seem  very  different  from  home, 
except  that  you  got  better  food  and  worse  colds.  It  was 
cruel  work  standing  out  at  night  in  all  weathers,  and  Mother 
Mack  didn't  leave  you  much  money,  scarcely  enough  for 
ostrich  feathers   or  a  plush   '  pallytoe,'   and   hardly   ever 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  85 

enough  for  cheap  scents.  It  was  duller  here  in  the  day, 
because  at  home  you  used  to  go  and  work  at  the  sweet- 
factory,  and  here  you  only  slaved  for  old  Mack  till  the  nights 
came  ;  and  they  were  monotonous  too,  and  you  were  dog- 
tired,  and  men  were  brutes  and  often  you  hated  them,  and 
all  the  same  there  seemed  no  doing  without  them.  As  for 
your  pals,  sometimes  you  liked  them  and  walked  arm-in-arm 
with  them  in  the  Euston  Road  ;  and  sometimes,  when 
Mother  Mack  favoured  them  or  they  riled  you,  you  hated 
them,  and  wanted  to  hurt  them.  Now  and  then  you  did, 
and  they  hurt  back  again.  But  if  they  were  ill  or  hungry, 
you  stood  by  them  and  went  without  yourself.  And  you 
never  would  have  taken  the  smallest  thing  belonging  to 
them,  or  to  any  one,  not  you  !  You  were  as  honest  as  the 
day.  That  was  perhaps  the  one  fact  that  you  knew  about 
yourself.  But  did  you  know  it  ?  Directly  you  tried  to  put 
things  together,  the  thread  somehow  snapped. 

Now  and  again  you  had  '  wishes.'  They  drifted  like 
aimless  winds  across  this  waste  of  rubble,  and  yet,  aimless 
though  they  were,  they  carried  something  like  a  fragrance 
from  afar :  for  one  moment  they  made  an  air-current. 
You  got  them  most  often  in  the  spring,  at  the  time  when  you 
would  suddenly  burst  out  crying  and  your  shoulders  shook 
with  sobs  for  nothing  at  all ;  or  else  odd  things  set  you  off — 
a  basket  of  daffodils  at  the  street  corner,  or  a  barrel-organ 
playing  a  slow  tune.  You  frequently  laughed,  too,  for  no 
reason,  excepting  that  others  near  you  were  laughing  ;  or 
because  when  you  went  out  walking  you  saw  somebody 
different  from  the  rest — a  coloured  man,  or  a  very  tall  one, 
or  a  woman  with  a  squint.  The  crying,  however,  was 
different ;  it  made  you  feel  better,  and  your  '  wishes  '  often 
came  along  with  it.  Not  wishes  for  finery  or  motor-cars — 
another  sort.  You  wished  to  see  some  green  grass  and  some 
trees  (Mother  Mack  never  let  you  get  as  far  as  the  parks), 
and  you  wanted  to  have  a  baby  of  j^our  own  ;   it  was  when 


86  NEW  AND  OLD 

you  saw  the  children  playing,  above  all  when  that  little  girl 
ran  up  to  you  and  put  up  its  face  to  be  kissed.  And  occasion- 
ally, at  rare  intervals,  you  vaguely  wished  to  be  good.  You 
didn't  know  how,  or  even  try  to  know  ;  but  you  thought  of 
your  mother,  and  once  when  you  felt  like  that  you  gave 
Mother  Mack  the  go-by  and,  when  none  of  the  girls  was 
anywhere  about,  you  nipped  into  a  church.  Gawd  !  wouldn't 
they  have  jeered  and  pinched  if  they  had  seen  you  !  But 
when  you  got  inside  you  couldn't  understand  a  word. 
Still,  the  organ  and  the  flowers  and  the  smell  of  fur  and  heat 
was  very  nice,  and  you  liked  the  quiet  when  the  ladies  put 
their  faces  down. 

Church  was  tabooed  by  all  self-respecting  ladies  of  Brecon 
Street  and  other  streets  like  Brecon  Street  :  church  and 
chapel  and  kind  ladies — kind  ladies,  perhaps,  most  of  all. 
What  had  they  got  to  do  with  the  other  ladies  of  Brecon 
Street  ?  And  they  thought  they  had.  They  seldom  got  at 
them,  but  when  they  did  they  used  silly  words  like  '  pure ' 
and  '  save  '  and  '  religious  ' — words  that  had  nothing  to  do 
with  anything.  If  they  spoke  to  you,  you  knew  what  to 
do  :  you  let  fly  a  volley  of  your  own  language,  and  you 
made  one  of  your  own  jokes — and  serve  them  jolly  well 
right  for  interfering.  Outside  such  volleys,  Gladys  com- 
prehended few  words  and  possessed  fewer,  not  enough  to 
make  ideas  with  ;  and  when  she  read,  if  they  began  with 
the  same  letter  and  were  of  about  the  same  length,  one 
looked  much  the  same  to  her  as  another. 

But  when  she  felt  angry  with  kind  ladies  she  generally 
stopped,  suddenly  checkmated  by  something  else.  The 
something  was  almost  the  most  vivid  of  all  her  odd  set  of 
lantern-slides.  It  was  a  sight  she  had  seen,  and  it  had 
left  a  picture  which  lasted — an  indelible  picture  which  came 
back  oftener  than  the  rest  and  with  greater  force.  She  had 
seen  it  one  late  afternoon  in  November  in  Roach  Lane, 
next  turning  but  two  from  Brecon  Street.     It  was  a  Satur- 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  87 

day,  and  Roach  Lane  market  was  in  full  swing.  The  dark 
had  fallen  and  yellowish  fog  hung  in  the  air,  so  that  the 
flaring  torches,  stuck  in  each  of  the  crowded  stalls — so 
crowded  that  you  could  hardly  thread  your  way  between 
them,  threw  a  tawny  light  on  the  blackness,  and  strange 
shadows  on  the  faces  of  the  jostling  buyers  and  sellers. 
The  kerb-stone  was  thick  with  them,  elbowing  and  pushing 
one  another  with  good-natured  oaths  and  loud  hagglings, 
while  they  fingered  the  dried  haddocks  or  felt  the  quality 
of  second-hand  plush  with  the  hands  of  connoisseurs. 
Gladys  was  the  quicker  to  notice  the  incongruous  figure  of 
a  '  kind  lady  '  issuing  rather  precipitately  from  a  door  down 
the  Lane.  A  woman  with  dishevelled  hair,  '  more  than 
half  seas  over,'  Gladys  noted,  ran  after  her  and  struck  her, 
so  that  the  lady  staggered  against  a  stall,  and  it  would  have 
gone  worse  with  her  had  not  the  woman's  attention  been 
caught  by  the  sight  of  a  man  bargaining  at  the  clearer  end 
of  the  alley.  She  made  for  him  at  once,  and  the  lady, 
though  she  gave  a  wince  of  pain,  said  no  word.  She  was 
a  queer  one,  thought  Gladys,  to  come  along  here  and  get 
that,  when  she  might  stay  comfortable  in  the  West  End 
minding  her  own  business.  What  for  did  the  bloomin' 
idiot  want  to  go  and  meddle  with  them  as  she  had  no  con- 
cern with  ?  It  must  be  that  she  got  somethink  out  of  it, 
a  pryin'  in  other  ladies'  houses  like  that !  But  there  was 
no  time  for  further  comment,  for  at  this  moment  the  atten- 
tion of  Roach  Lane  was  diverted.  The  woman  who  had 
made  for  the  man  was  catching  it  hard  from  him  with  a 
stick,  and  she  was  crying — crying  at  the  top  of  her  voice. 
The  sight  and  sound  were  so  common  in  Roach  Lane  that 
no  one  stirred  from  his  place,  but  the  little  groups  stopped 
marketing  and  looked  on,  half-curious,  half-indifferent,  as 
they  might  watch  a  hackneyed  play.  Only  the  lady  did 
anything.  She  suddenly  ran  across  the  road,  caught  the 
man's  arm,  and,  taking  him  by  surprise,  contrived  to  knock 


88  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  stick  out  of  his  hand.  The  woman  fell  upon  her  at 
once  with  her  fists.  '  It 's  you  agin,  yer  sniveller,  is  it  ? 
I  '11  teach  yer,  by  Gawd,  I  will  !  '  she  cried  ;  and  the  man, 
stung  to  fury,  lashed  out  blindly  and  threw  the  interloper 
down.  This  was  a  new  sensation,  even  in  Roach  Lane. 
A  crowd  gathered  round  her,  Gladys  among  the  rest,  '  Well, 
I  'm  darned  if  this  ain't  a  rum  go,'  she  muttered.  But  a 
policeman  came  up,  and  then  there  was  a  rummer  go  still. 
The  lady,  who  had  struggled  to  her  feet,  her  hat  crushed 
in,  her  clothes  all  splashed  with  mud,  refused  to  give  the 
couple  in  charge.  '  It  was  my  fault,'  she  said,  '  I  attacked 
him  first ' ;  so  the  policeman  did  nothing  but  support  her, 
and  she  passed  away,  limping,  down  the  street.  Only,  as 
she  did  so,  Gladys  caught  sight  of  her  face  ;  and  she  never 
forgot  it.  It  was  the  face  of  an  angel  she  had  once  seen  in 
a  shop  on  a  Christmas  card.  She  did  not  look  angry,  only 
pitiful  and  very  quiet,  and  her  hat  had  a  bunch  of  lovely 
Parmer  voylets  in  it,  and  they  was  all  bashed  in  and  spoilt, 
which  was  a  dreadful  shame  ;  she  had  turned  orful  white, 
too,  and  yet  she  had  never  made  one  sound.  Any  gurl  she 
knew  would  have  screamed — wouldn't  they  jist  ?  It  was 
the  look  in  her  eyes,  though,  which  gave  Gladys  that  queer 
feeling — one  she  had  never  had  before — a  kind  of  feeling 
as  if  she  were  going  to  choke.  What  on  earth  did  she  go 
and  do  that  for  ?  She  couldn't  have  anything  to  make  out 
of  that ;  and  the  woman  had  hurt  her  just  a  moment  ago. 
Well,  she  'd  be  blowed  if  it  wasn't  the  rummest  go  !  She 
was  a  plucky  one,  no  mistake.  Then  that  look  in  her  eyes 
returned  to  Gladys,  and  the  queer  choked  feeling  came 
again,  and  deep  down  in  her,  where  she  could  not  get  at  it, 
there  rose,  or  there  tried  to  rise,  a  wish  that  she  could  do 
a  spunky  thing  like  that — something  handsome  ;  and  still 
more  that  she  could  look  like  that  about  the  eyes,  and  have 
pale  Parmer  voylets  in  her  hat.  Yet  all  the  time  she  knew 
that  the  lady  belonged  to  Church  and  the  West  End,  and 


GLADYS  LEONORA   PRATT  89 

all  the  things  in  life  that  were  most  against  the  code  of 
Brecon  Street. 

This  had  happened  weeks  since,  and  weeks  were  ages  to 
Gladys  ;  but  the  picture  had  not  faded  in  the  least  when  it 
recurred  to  her  vision,  although  the  lantern  had  since 
then  added  other  slides  to  the  confused  store  of  her  im- 
pressions— the  impressions  of  which  she  seemed  to  be 
made  up.  For  such,  in  some  measure  as  she  stands  here, 
was  Gladys  Leonora  Pratt. 

That  is  to  say,  as  far  as  her  inward  self  was  concerned. 
There  was  also  the  outer  woman.  Her  appearance  was  not 
adventurous.  She  seemed  as  like  to  many  other  Gladys 
Leonoras  as  is  one  sparrow  to  another.  Rather  short  and 
thick-set  she  was,  with  shapely  hands  and  arms,  round 
which  jingled  cheap  gilt  bangles  ;  with  heavy  cheeks,  sallow 
complexion  and  nondescript  features,  except  that  her  small 
brown  eyes  always  looked  you  straight  in  the  face.  She 
had  tried  to  dye  her  indistinguishable  brown  hair,  straight 
hair,  parted  on  one  side,  that  lay  flat  and  heavy  upon  her 
forehead  as  if  it  had  no  life  left ;  but  the  gold  dye  had  not 
taken  properly  and  remained  in  patches  that  showed  the 
brown  underneath.  Mother  Mack  had  let  her  know  what 
she  thought  of  it ;  she  had  also  let  her  know  what  she 
thought  of  her  cough. 

For,  at  the  moment  when  we  find  her,  Gladys  was  cough- 
ing pretty  badly.  She  was  sitting  in  her  stuffy  little  room 
where  everything  was  soiled- — bed-linen,  and  yellow  plush 
divan,  and  close-drawn  muslin  blinds,  and  the  folk  who 
entered  there.  There  was  a  looking-glass,  and  a  shaky 
chest  of  drawers,  of  which  one  foot  was  wanting.  A  man's 
bowler  lay  upon  it,  with  three  cigarette-ends  and  a  cheap 
cigarette-box,  empty,  an  oriental  beauty's  head  upon  the 
lid.  On  the  mantel-shelf  stood  Gladys's  one  treasure,  a 
biscuit  china  ornament — a  little  girl  holding  a  large  hat. 
You  put  flowers  into  the  hat,  only  she  never  had  any  to 


90  NEW  AND  OLD 

put  there ;  but  she  thought  it  the  most  beautiful  thing  she 
had  ever  seen,  and  sometimes  she  imagined  a  red  rose  in  it. 
She  had  looked  at  it  for  a  fortnight  in  a  fancy-shop  off 
Tottenham  Court  Road,  and  once — in  the  early  days  of 
Brecon  Street — she  had  asked  a  chap  to  give  it  her,  and 
he  had.  But  that  seemed  long  ago.  For  the  dingy  little 
room  had,  since  then,  seen  a  series  of  dingy  inmates,  chiefly 
under-clerks  and  shop-assistants  ;  and  she  had  not  liked 
one  of  them  more  than  another,  until  three  weeks  ago. 

And  then  there  was  an  exception.  The  exception  was 
in  the  jewellery  line  ;  he  '  travelled  '  for  a  city  firm,  and  he 
was  German.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Gladys  nourished 
an  interesting  passion,  or  even  any  feeling  that  came  near 
what  we  call  love  ;  but  there  was  within  her  some  faint 
sluggish  stirring  of  life,  some  movement  of  a  half-sentient 
germ  that  might,  somewhere  else,  with  sun  and  rain  have 
struggled  towards  birth.  Her  soul  for  one  moment  had 
turned  in  its  sleep.  The  traveller  in  jewellery  had  given 
her  a  kind  of  sense  of  home — an  inarticulate  desire  to  settle, 
even  to  marry  him,  the  first  of  such  desires  that  she  had 
experienced.  He  had  talked  politely  to  her  and  asked  after 
her  cough,  just  as  if  she  had  not  lived  in  Brecon  Street ;  and 
one  evening  he  had  had  a  cold  and  had  let  her  put  on  a 
mustard-leaf.  And  he  was  clean  and  fair,  and  wore  a  real 
white  collar,  not  a  paper  one  ;  and  he  had  given  her  his  photo- 
graph, quite  the  gentleman,  with  his  hand  in  a  cuff  resting 
upon  a  marble  table,  an  india-rubber  plant  by  his  side.  He 
had  come  back  every  evening  for  a  week  and  more  ;  then  he 
had  gone  off,  like  the  rest.  It  had  not  made  her  unhappy  ; 
but  the  first  day  or  two  she  felt  restless  and  rather  uncom- 
fortable, as  if  she  had  lost  something,  and  even  now  his  clean 
face  came  up  before  her  eyes.  It  was  one  of  the  clear-cut 
images  in  her  gallery. 

He  had  given  her  more  than  his  photograph.  In  the  first 
place  there  was  a  treat  at  the  theatre  ;    and  the  play  was 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  91 

about  a  pore  guii  like  her,  wot  married  a  bloomin'  toff  and 
had  a  face  like  the  lady's  in  Roach  Lane,  the  same  as  the 
angel's  on  the  Christmas  card  ;  and  her  sister  was  cruel 
jealous  and  wanted  the  oof;  so  she  strangled  the  bride  in 
her  bed  with  the  coverlet,  and  the  strangling  was  finished 
that  clever  and  easy — every  bit  of  it  done  on  the  stage — till 
Gladys  felt  she  was  a  doin'  of  it  herself.  And  then  there 
came  the  bride's  scream — quite  'orrible — and  the  sister 
stifled  that  too.  But  after  the  play  was  ended  it  went  on 
ringing  in  her  ears  ;  and  so  it  had  done  since,  though  it  was 
just  over  a  week  ago  that  she  had  heard  it. 

Besides  the  treat, '  he  '  had  made  her  a  wonderful  present ; 
it  had  superseded  the  china  vase  ;  it  was  her  most  precious 
possession,  such  as  she  had  never  thought  to  own.  For  it 
was  a  brooch — a  real  gold  brooch  ;  one  of  those  shaped  like 
a  merry-thought  bone,  and  on  it  was  '  Mizpah  '  in  false 
rubies.  She  could  not  think  much  of  the  giver ;  she  soon 
liked  the  brooch  a  great  deal  more.  It  came  to  be  almost 
her  only  thought  all  day — how  she  would  look  wearing  it, 
and  how  the  gurls  would  envy  her,  but.  most  of  all  how  she 
could  hide  it  from  Mother  Mack  :  you  never  knew  what  old 
Mack  would  grab. 

Especially  just  now.  For  soon  after  she  got  it  (the  day 
before  he  left),  her  cough  became  worse,  and  her  cheeks  grew 
pale  and  thin,  and  her  '  work  '  fell  off,  and  Mack,  the  old 
Devil,  began  to  threaten  her  and  to  say  she  did  not  pay  her 
way.  So  Gladys  tied  the  brooch  up  in  a  stocking  at  the 
back  of  her  drawer,  where  no  one  could  get  at  it,  and  felt 
quite  easy  in  her  mind. 

The  day  after  she  had  done  this,  the  calamity  happened. 
Her  cough  was  constant  and  she  felt  too  bad  to  move. 
There  had  been  a  hand-to-hand  set-to  with  Mack,  who  was 
the  worse  that  afternoon  for  neuralgia  and  for  drink.  She 
had  heaped  vile  names  upon  Gladys  Leonora,  had  hit  her 
about  the  head  and  pushed  her  out  of  doors  ;    she  would 


92  NEW  AND  OLD 

have  no  ugly  devils  as  couldn't  pay  their  keep,  she  shouted. 
And  when  in  the  late  afternoon  Gladys  came  back,  she  found 
her  drawers  rifled  and  the  brooch  gone.  Mother  Mack  had 
stolen  it,  curse  her  !  And  it  was  only  too  clear  what  she 
would  say  if  she  were  asked  for  it ;  she  had  taken  it  as  her 
right,  to  pay  what  was  owing  to  her  for  food.  It  was  a 
damned  lie  ;  she  owed  her  nothing,  bloody  thief  that  she 
was ;  and  so  she  would  tell  her.  But  at  the  very  thought  she 
cowered  and  knew  she  could  not ;  she  felt  the  blows  of 
that  big  thick  arm  raining  upon  her  back  ;  she  was  powerless 
against  her.  No,  she  would  run  away,  she  would.  Yet 
where  had  she  to  go  ?  259  Brecon  Street  was  the  only  roof 
she  could  think  of  that  would  shelter  her.  She  did  not 
dream  of  informing  the  police ;  they  were  the  natural 
enemies  of  herself  as  well  as  of  Mother  Mack — of  herself  and 
of  all  her  clan.  There  is  a  code  of  honour  in  Brecon  Street 
— limited,  no  doubt,  like  the  locality,  but  more  rigorous 
than  many  wider  codes. 

Gladys  Leonora  was  seized  with  a  paroxysm  of  blind 
helpless  fury.  She  tried  to  scream,  but  her  cough  had  made 
her  hoarse,  and  the  words  stuck  in  her  throat.  Then  she 
beat  the  floor  with  her  fists,  and  she  got  up  and  beat  the 
door  too,  and  she  knocked  her  poor  head  against  the  wall. 
After  which,  thoroughly  exhausted,  she  sank  in  a  heap  upon 
the  ground.  Her  chest  heaved  with  loud,  dry  sobs,  and  she 
cried  till  she  thought  she  would  break  in  half.  As  she  lay 
there,  the  room  grew  dark  and  dreadful.  Mechanically  she 
heard  the  rain  drip  outside,  and  the  bell  of  a  Baptist  chapel 
some  way  off  sound  on  with  a  muffled  regularity  ;  mechani- 
cally, too,  she  heard  young  Muriel  and  Lily  go  downstairs. 
'  Mother  Mack  's  that  bad  with  her  neuralgy,  she  's  gone  to 
bed,'  Muriel  was  saying,  and  the  words  entered  Gladys's 
ears  without  her  taking  in  their  meaning ;  then  the  house- 
door  shut,  and  all  was  quiet  again. 

At  last  she  got  up,  stiff  and  aching  from  the  hard  boards  ; 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  93 

she  had  not  had  a  crumb  since  morning,  and  her  hands  and 
legs  were  trembling.  As  she  stood  there,  the  first  thing  her 
eye  fell  upon  was  the  open  drawer  where  the  brooch  had 
been.  An  awful  wave  of  hatred  swept  over  her,  such  as  she 
had  never  before  experienced.  It  had  her — she  turned  giddy 
and  reeled.  She  must  do  something  to  old  Mack,  something 
at  once.  But,  again,  what  ?  And  how  could  she  do  it  ? 
Mack  was  three  times  as  strong  as  herself.  All  of  a  sudden 
the  words  she  had  heard  automatically  came  back  into  her 
head.  '  Mother  Mack  is  in  bed  with  her  neuralgy,'  and  when 
she  had  the  neuralgy  they  always  called  her  the  Hell-cat, 
it  made  her  double  as  bad  as  usual ;  besides,  the  gurls  had 
gone  out — even  they  would  not  be  there  to  defend  her  ; 
she  was  alone  in  the  house  with  Mother  Mack.  .  .  .  Still 
she  would  do  something.  The  fierceness  and  giddiness  grew 
worse.  Yes,  she  would  do  something.  What,  she  had  no 
idea.  She  only  felt  that  she  must  rush  downstairs,  out, 
vaguely,  into  the  dark,  and  smash.  What  she  would  smash, 
she  did  not  know. 

Downstairs  then  she  ran,  Maenad-like,  her  hair  half 
fallen  on  her  shoulders.  Her  pals'  black  empty  room  stared 
at  her  across  the  landing  till  it  frightened  her,  but  she  was 
running  so  fast  that  she  had  little  time  for  any  sensation. 
She  did  not  even  notice  the  strange  suffocating  smell  there 
was  on  the  staircase — an  extraordinary  smell,  strong 
enough  even  to  overpower  the  usual  stale  perfume  of  paraffin 
and  onions  which  was  chronic  in  the  house.  As  she  made 
for  the  front-door,  it  reached  even  her  benumbed  senses  ; 
it  gave  her  nerves  a  kind  of  awakening  shock.  She  had 
smelled  it  '  here  '  once  before  in  the  kitchen  ;  somewhere 
the  gas  must  be  escaping.  What  did  that  matter  to  her  ? 
She  had  her  hand  upon  the  door,  when  her  attention  was 
really  arrested.  From  Mother  Mack's  room  on  the  right 
of  the  entry  passage  there  came  a  strange  muffled  groan  ; 
then  another  groan  as  if  from  one  unconscious ;  then  the 


94  NEW  AND  OLD 

heavy  broken  gasps  again.  Curiosity,  savage  curiosity, 
took  hold  of  Gladys.  Old  Mack  was  evidently  asleep  ;  she 
could  not  spring  out  and  beat  her.  Stealthily  she  opened 
the  bedroom  door  and  stood  upon  the  threshold.  But  at 
first  she  staggered,  almost  falling  backwards,  choked  by 
the  fumes  that  met  her.  It  was  here  then  that  the  gas  was 
escaping — from  the  jet  near  the  mantel-shelf.  Mother 
Mack's  bedstead  was  opposite  the  fireplace,  along  the  wall, 
with  its  foot  towards  the  door.  The  street-lamp  outside 
shed  through  the  window  a  fitful  half-light  upon  the  room, 
and  when  Gladys  had  stood  there  a  moment  her  eyes  got 
used  to  it  and  she  saw.  As  she  looked  upon  the  heavy, 
helpless,  prostrate  form,  that  wild  hatred  surged  up  in  her 
again,  and  it  passed  into  an  active  thirst  for  vengeance. 
Yes — she  must  do  something  to  pay  her  out.  You  had 
only  to  glance  at  old  Mack's  grey  face  to  know  that  she 
could  not  jump  up.  She  was  drugged,  stifled  by  the  gas  ; 
she  knew  nothing ;  if  it  went  on  long  enough  it  would 
finish  her ;  she  would  have  gone  by  now,  very  likely,  if  the 
jet  had  been  nearer  and  if  there  were  not  such  a  draught 
from  the  door.     Yes,  she  must  pay  the  old  brute  out. 

Then,  as  Gladys  stood  there,  something  happened. 
There  rose  before  her,  till  she  seemed  in  it,  of  it,  the  strang- 
ling scene  upon  the  stage.  The  figure  in  the  bed  here  was 
lying  in  the  same  position  as  the  figure  had  lain  there  ;  the 
light  was  the  same,  falling  from  without  on  the  dark  room 
within.  And  Gladys  was  waiting  on  the  threshold  of  the 
room  in  just  the  same  place  as  the  sister  had  waited.  What 
easier  than  to  go  on  with  the  part — to  take  the  rug  off  the 
bed  as  the  sister  had  done,  get  your  fingers  round  that  un- 
resisting neck,  and  make  an  end  of  her  ?  She  might  revive 
if  she  were  left ;  Muriel  and  Lily,  or  their  chaps,  might 
come  in  and  save  her.  But  Gladys  was  scarcely  conscious 
of  these  thoughts,  she  was  so  much  part  of  the  play. 

Children,  Geniuses,  Gladys  Leonoras  put  nothing  between 


GLADYS  LEONORA  PRATT  95 

idea  and  action — there  where  the  average  man  puts  reason. 
Children,  Geniuses  and  Gladys  Leonoras  get  suggestions 
and  at  once  convert  them  into  life.  With  children  they 
become  games,  with  geniuses  creation,  with  Gladys  Leonoras 
crimes  or  heroisms — the  kind  of  heroisms  that  makes  news- 
paper-readers exclaim  at  the  wonder  of  them  in  such 
surroundings.  As  Gladys  advanced  relentless,  like  one 
who  was  walking  in  a  dream,  the  deed  was  nearly  done. 

And  then,  again,  something  happened.  Without  reason, 
in  the  flash  of  a  moment,  another  picture  put  itself  over 
the  scene  on  the  stage,  and  obliterated  it.  It  was  the 
picture  of  the  lady  limping  painfully  across  Roach  Lane — 
the  lady  with  the  angel-face  outlined  clearly  on  the  tawny 
darkness,  as  she  passed  between  the  flaring  stalls  and  dis- 
appeared. The  image  was  so  strong  and  unexpected  that 
the  other  image  yielded  before  it,  faded  off  the  sheet. 
Gladys  was  no  longer  on  the  stage  ;  she  wTas  absorbed  in 
the  lady.  And  once  more  that  queer  wish  came  over  her 
— the  sense  how  nice  it  would  be  to  feel  '  like  that.'  Her 
muscles  relaxed,  her  arm  fell.  In  an  instant,  vision  changed 
to  action.  She  ran  to  the  jet  and  turned  the  gas  off ;  then 
to  the  window.  With  forces  strained  to  the  utmost,  she 
wrenched  the  tightly- jammed  bolt  and  flung  it  open,  and 
she  threw  the  door  open  too  :  she  had  seen  these  things 
done  when  the  gas  escaped  before  in  the  kitchen.  Next, 
she  turned  to  Mother  Mack.  Brandy  she  knew  was  what 
the  ambulance  men — them  in  medals  and  uniforms — gave 
to  people  who  fainted  in  a  crowd.  And  the  brandy-bottle 
was  never  far  from  Mack  ;  no  difficulty  in  finding  it  now, 
for  it  stood,  half-empty,  on  a  chair  near  the  bed.  She 
poured  some  down  her  throat :  her  mouth,  which  was  all 
swollen,  was  still  open,  but  her  breathing,  although  it  was 
laboured,  was  getting  better.  Presently  her  eyelids  fluttered, 
and  she  moved  ;  then  she  turned  on  her  side  and  made  an 
indistinct  muttering.     It  was  high  time  for  Gladys  to  be 


96  NEW  AND  OLD 

off.  If  Mack  woke  to  find  her  there,  she  'd  play  Old  Nick 
and  suspect  her  of  taking  the  brandy,  or  anything  else. 
No,  she  hadn't  no  mind  to  stick  out  that.  She  slipped 
away  to  the  front-door  and  opened  it.  Their  neighbour,  a 
pendant  to  Mack,  was  standing  as  usual  on  her  doorstep. 
'  So  Mrs.  Mack  had  the  neuralgics,  pore  dear  ?  Oh,  no, 
she  wouldn't  mind  comin'  in  and  givin'  an  eye  to  her  while 
the  gurls  were  out.'  Gladys  mentioned  no  word  of  what 
had  just  happened.  She  was  in  a  tremor  lest  it  should  be 
discovered  that  she  had  been  in  Mack's  room. 

By  now  it  was  the  hour  for  her  to  go  out  on  her  usual 
beat.  Only  she  did  not  feel  as  usual.  She  was  no  longer 
tired  and  sick  of  everything.  Her  cough  had  stopped,  and 
she  had  a  sense  of  peace  foreign  to  her — peace  that  was 
almost  pleasure.  For  the  moment,  as  she  went  up  to  her 
room,  she  had  even  forgotten  about  the  brooch.  So  she 
stood  quite  cheerful  before  the  glass  (it  had  a  crack  across 
the  middle),  and  put  a  patch  of  cheap  rouge  upon  either 
cheek ;  after  which  she  tousled  her  hair,  pinned  it  up, 
cocked  her  big  velvet  hat  with  its  uncurled  green  feather 
at  the  professional  angle  upon  her  head,  and  went  out  into 
the  drizzling  mist.  '  We  shan't  get  much  work  to-night, 
it 's  raining,'  said  Irene  from  next  door.  Gladys  only 
nodded  and  walked  on,  for  nothing  seemed  to  matter  much 
this  evening.  And  she  went  to  wait  at  her  customary 
corner. 

The  germ  of  the  spirit  lay  dormant  again  in  the  inchoate 
body  with  which  nature  had  provided  it — the  muddy 
tenement  where,  in  spite  of  all  things,  it  had  kept  itself 
alive.  And  there  was  joy  in  heaven.  The  Angels  felt  no 
need  of  waiting  till  Gladys  Leonora  Pratt  should  repent. 


WOMEN  AS   LETTER-WRITERS 

'  A  letter  behoves  to  tell  about  oneself,'  writes  Mrs.  Carlyle 
to  John  Sterling,  and  she  could  certainly  speak  as  one  having 
authority.  She  hits  the  truth,  for  women  at  any  rate. 
Good  letters  need  not  necessarily  talk  of  their  writers,  but 
they  must,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  tell  about  them  ; 
must,  above  all  else,  transmit  their  personality.  And  the 
means  of  transmission  becomes  almost  as  important  as  the 
matter  in  hand.  It  is  one  thing  to  have  something  to  say 
and  another  to  have  the  art  of  saying  it ;  an  art  which  must 
always  be  individual  to  the  writer,  and  which,  in  a  flash, 
conveys  the  essence  of  his  subject  in  so  intimate  a  manner 
that  the  reader  feels  like  his  confidant.  It  is  an  art  hard  to 
regulate  by  any  general  rules,  except  that  of  simplicity, 
especially  in  the  case  of  letter-writing.  The  sweetest  and 
most  pensive  of  correspondents,  Dorothy  Osborne,  said  all 
there  was  to  say  about  it  as  long  ago  as  1653  :  '  All  letters, 
methinks,  should  be  free  and  easy  as  one's  discourse  ;  not 
studied,  as  an  oration,  nor  made  up  of  hard  words,  like  a 
charm.  Tis  an  admirable  thing  to  see  how  some  people 
will  labour  to  find  out  terms  that  may  obscure  plain  sense, 
like  a  gentleman  I  know,  who  would  never  say  "  the  weather 
grew  cold,"  but  that  "  winter  began  to  salute  us."  I  have 
no  patience  with  such  coxcombs,  and  cannot  blame  an  old 
uncle  of  mine  that  threw  the  standish  at  his  man's  head, 
because  he  writ  a  letter  for  him  where,  instead  of  saying 
(as  his  master  bid  him)  "  that  he  would  have  writ  himself, 
but  he  had  the  gout  in  his  hand,"  he  said  that  "  the  gout 
in  his  hand  would  not  permit  him  to  put  pen  to  paper." 

G 


98  NEW  AND  OLD 

Dorothy  Osborne  herself  here  gives  the  best  proof  that 
not  only  simplicity  but  also  spontaneity  is  needed,  if  a  letter 
is  to  be  perfectly  satisfactory — spontaneity,  which  is  a  matter 
of  the  heart  as  well  as  the  head,  and  implies  the  invaluable 
possession  of  mental  sympathies.  The  best  letter- writers, 
indeed,  give  the  impression  of  their  correspondents'  per- 
sonality along  with  their  own  and  vary,  almost  imper- 
ceptibly, with  each  of  them.  A  brilliant  critic  of  '  The  Art 
of  Letter- writing  '  *  has  recently  told  us  that  '  as  a  jest's 
prosperity  lies  in  the  ear  of  him  that  hears,  so  a  letter  must 
depend  upon  the  person  to  whom  it  is  addressed.'  Many  of 
the  persons  thus  addressed  have  been  women,  and  in  this 
way  alone  they  have  exercised  a  great  influence  on  letter- 
writing — on  the  letter-writing  of  men.  Letter-receiving 
has  been  a  calling  for  them,  and,  skilled  in  the  arts  of  evoking 
and  provoking  alike,  they  have  become  as  good  as  a  School 
for  style,  and  an  Academy  of  nimble  wit. 

But  they  have  been  far  from  playing  only  a  passive  part. 
Letter-writing  seems,  indeed,  an  art  especially  invented  to 
suit  the  talents  of  women,  and  (since  their  defects  are  often 
their  graces)  even  to  suit  their  foibles.  Women  are  not 
creators  ;  they  are  interpreters,  critics  ;  their  best  qualities, 
sympathy  and  insight,  are  the  essence  of  criticism ;  and 
good  letter-writing  is  criticism — of  life,  of  people,  of  art,  as 
the  case  may  be.  The  quick  perceptions  and  elusive  grace 
that  are  natural  to  women,  their  habit  of  producing  and  their 
gift  for  expressing  themselves,  their  mastery  of  detail,  their 
power  of  subtle  suggestion  and  of  intuition,  their  very 
inability  to  sustain  thought  and  therefore  to  become  heavy, 
their  faculty  for  intimacy  which  sums  up  all  the  rest — these 
are  so  many  qualifications  for  the  writing  of  letters,  and  of 
personal  letters  in  particular. 

Generally  speaking,  correspondence  can  be  divided  into 

1  'The  Art  of  Letter-writing,' by  H.  W.  Paul,  Ninetcetith  Century  for 
July  1898. 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER-WRITERS  99 

two  chief  kinds — the  letters  written  for  one,  and  the  letters 
written  for  more  than  one.  The  first  are  the  intimate  letters, 
often  from  people  comparatively  unknown  ;  only  existing 
to  reveal  individual  character,  and  bringing  with  them  a 
particular  and  penetrating  charm,  a  sense  of  personal 
discovery.  Those  of  the  second  sort  are  written  with  an  eye 
to  an  audience,  whether  it  consist  of  posterity,  of  the  public, 
or  only  of  a  coterie.  They  are  literary  achievements  that 
belong  to  all  the  world,  and  we  have  no  desire  to  appropriate 
them,  no  enjoyment  of  them  as  private  property.  They  are 
not  so  much  loved  as  admired,  especially  by  men,  and  it  is 
perhaps  by  men  that  they  are  best  written.  The  lovable, 
intimate  letter,  on  the  contrary,  comes  most  naturally  from 
a  woman's  pen,  and,  as  often  as  not,  the  masculine  mind 
thinks  it  trivial.  But  the  foremost  letter-writers  of  the 
world  have  contrived  to  combine  both  set  form  and  personal 
distinction.  Madame  de  Sevigne,  of  course,  achieved  this 
and,  in  herself,  includes  almost  every  sort  of  letter-writing. 
It  is  dull  however  to  discuss  the  unquestionable,  and  to 
comment  upon  Madame  de  Sevigne's  position  in  this  respect 
is  as  futile  as  comment  upon  Shakespeare's  position  as  a 
dramatist. 

If  we  come  to  the  letters  that  aim  at  being  literature,  and 
to  such  women  as  have  written  them,  we  find  any  kind  of 
classification  impossible.  Eloquent  letters,  political  letters 
belong  to  this  province,  such  as  Madame  Roland's  heroic 
and  persuasive  epistles  to  the  Girondins,  which  are  neces- 
sarily written  from  a  platform.  But  the  great  era  of  corre- 
spondence in  France  immediately  preceded  Madame  Roland 
and  the  Revolution.  It  was  the  period  of  writing  for  a 
coterie — the  most  elaborate  kind  of  writing ;  for  nothing 
can  be  more  self-conscious  than  sentences  penned  for  the 
perusal  of  a  group  of  critical  intimates,  whose  opinion  is  vital 
to  the  writer.  Not  a  note  could  be  composed  in  certain 
circles  without  being  read  aloud  to  them,  and  this  in  the  days 


100  NEW  AND  OLD 

when  one  lady  alone  sent  sixteen  thousand  letters  to  one 
gentleman  ;  when  not  only  gentlemen  wrote  to  ladies,  but 
adoring  ladies  wrote  to  each  other,  once,  sometimes  twice, 
in  twenty-four  hours,  on  topics  as  often  as  not  impersonal. 
The  queen  of  these  brilliant  but  rather  malicious  Muses  was 
Madame  du  Deffand,  the  most  brilliant,  the  most  malicious 
of  them  all.  Her  physical  blindness  seemed  to  endow  her 
with  an  extra  acuteness  of  mental  vision,  and  her  pen  darts 
like  lightning,  withering  wherever  it  passes.  Byron  him- 
self could  not  be  more  bored  or  more  unkind  than  Madame 
du  Deffand,  and  she  had  none  of  the  high  spirits  which  often 
redeemed  his  sallies.  In  her  day  kindness  was  too  often 
confounded  with  stupidity.  She  certainly  fulfilled  Mrs. 
Carlyle's  injunction  to  letter- writers,  and  her  letters  may  be 
cited  as  masterpieces  of  self-revelation.  They  are  chiefly 
written  to  her  friend  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul ;  to  Voltaire, 
on  whom  she  practised  platonics  ;  and  to  Horace  Walpole, 
with  whom,  when  she  was  seventy,  she  had  an  arduous 
flirtation.  She  demanded  a  heart  from  others,  but  did  not 
care  to  possess  one  herself  ;  she  tried  to  replace  it  by  a  large 
and  lucid  mind,  which  wielded  epigram  like  a  sword  and 
forced  upon  her  a  panoramic  view  of  the  evils  of  life,  without 
any  cloud-effects  to  soften  them  down.  Her  letters  seem 
made  up  of  mind  and  decorum — sceptical  decorum — and 
sound  no  higher  note  than  an  enthusiastic  avoidance  of 
discomfort. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  her  description  of  her  day.  She  has 
'  torn  herself  out  of  bed  that  her  frisure,  begun  the  day 
before,  may  be  completed.'  Her  '  poor  head  is  overpowered 
by  four  heavy  hands  .  .  .  her  curling-irons  resound  in  her 
ears.'  An  officer  and  an  archbishop  are  chattering  to  her ; 
her  head-dress  and  panier  are  being  prepared.  Suddenly  a 
voice  from  the  next  room  announces  that  the  King  is  passing 
on  his  way  to  Mass  ;  it  is  church  time.  '  Allons  !  '  she  cries 
in  her  letter,  '  quick,  my  head-gear,  my  muff,  my  fan,  my 


WOMKN  AS  LETTER-WRITERS  101 

prayer  book  !  Ne  scandalisons  personnc  !  My  chair ! 
My  porters  !  One,  two,  three,  off !  '  Or  if  we  want  her 
philosophy,  '  There  is  but  one  decision  to  make  about  the 
world,'  she  says  :  '  to  let  it  be  as  it  is  ;  to  laugh  at  it  without 
pretending  to  reform  it ;  and  to  abandon  la  Marechalc  to 
her  levity,  her  low  instincts,  and  her  inconsequences,  without 
bothering  one's  head  about  her.' 

'  Elks  sont  commc  il  plait  a  Dieu,  comme  clles  vous  vien- 
ncnt ;  et  si  vous  avez  de  l'esprit  ce  n'est  pas  votre  faute,' 
says  Madame  du  Deffand  to  a  witty  Abbe  about  his  letters. 
She  and  her  contemporaries  often  thought  they  were  admir- 
ing spontaneity  when  they  were  carefully  cultivating  light- 
ness, for  the  prevailing  worship  of  mind  made  self-con- 
sciousness natural.  Her  seriousness — and  she  could  be 
admirably  serious — is  so  artistic  that  it  seems  simple,  almost 
obvious,  and  one  finds  oneself  wondering  why  such  essential 
things  have  not  been  said  before.  The  quality  of  unosten- 
tatious gravity  is  the  distinction  of  French  writers,  and  we 
sometimes  find  these  ladies  of  last  century  having  the  most 
delicate  literary  discussions  on  paper. 

It  was  the  fashion  of  the  times  also  (and  Madame  du 
Deffand  was  its  leader)  to  write  pages  of  analysis  of  one's 
friends'  characters — and  of  one's  own.  Women  are  audaci- 
ously interested  in  themselves,  and  therefore  audaciously 
personal,  even  in  such  deliberate  epistles  as  these.  They 
are  also  unabashed  by  detail,  and  can  trifle  to  profound 
purpose.  Certain  letters,  like  thistle-down,  live  only  by 
virtue  of  their  lightness,  and  skim  over  Time  too  quickly 
for  him  to  lay  hold  on  them.  What  man — what  Horace 
Walpole  even — would  dare  to  confide  to  an  audience  such 
a  tissue  of  gossamer  scandal  and  delicate  intuition  as  most 
of  these  letters  represent  ?  Yet  in  these  airy  nothings  lies 
the  secret  of  French  genius — the  Genius  of  Intercourse. 

Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  was  more  ambitious  than 
Madame  du  Deffand.     She  did  not  confine  her  attention 


102  NEW  AND  OLD 

to  a  coterie,  but  wrote  for  posterity,  and  rather  rashly  pro- 
claimed that  her  letters  would  be  read  long  after  Madame 
de  Sevigne's  were  forgotten.  In  other  respects  she  reminds 
us  of  the  blind  old  Frenchwoman,  especially  in  her  power 
of  epigram  and  Book  of  Ecclesiasticus  wisdom.  But  she, 
at  any  rate,  regarded  her  race  with  a  cold  kindness  which 
made  her  take  pains  to  help  it ;  her  philosophy,  too,  was 
no  mere  shield  against  spiritual  discomfort  and  showed 
some  of  the  real  Stoic's  courage  and  austerity.  Her  letters 
reveal  a  curious  mixture  of  later  Rome  and  modern  London  ; 
they  seem  to  be  written  by  an  Epicurean  who  is  watching 
Christianity  with  approbation.  If  they  are  less  amusing 
than  Madame  du  Deffand's,  they  are  also  more  solid  and 
not  so  fatiguing  to  the  spirit.  But  then,  unlike  that 
lady,  she  is  never  bored  and  is  gifted  with  an  endless 
curiosity,  an  endless  interest  in  fact.  Her  flirtation  by 
correspondence  with  Pope  was  probably  as  great  a  piece 
of  vanity  as  that  of  Madame  du  Deffand  with  Horace 
Walpole  ;  but  it  was  more  abstract  and  better  disciplined. 
In  all  her  letters,  but  especially  in  those  to  him,  she  is  mistress 
of  classical  description  and  of  a  precision  which  is  refresh- 
ing. The  modern  quality  of  humour,  of  seeing  things 
through  a  personal  atmosphere,  was  as  unknown  as  it  would 
have  been  repugnant  to  her.  She  never  paints,  she  engraves; 
and  her  best  accounts  are  like  intaglios,  clear-cut  and  excel- 
lently designed.  She  is  a  scholar  even  in  her  frivolities, 
and  there  is  the  same  nicety  in  her  account  of  a  rakish  card- 
party  as  in  her  sober  pictures  of  Oriental  scenes. 
She  writes  to  Pope  from  Belgrade  in  1717  : 
'  This  place  .  .  .  perfectly  answers  the  description  of  the 
Elysian  Fields.  I  am  in  the  middle  of  a  wood  consisting 
chiefly  of  fruit-trees  watered  by  a  vast  number  of  fountains 
.  .  .  and  divided  into  many  shady  walks  upon  short  grass. 
.  .  .  The  village  is  only  inhabited  by  the  richest  among 
the  Christians,  who  meet  every  night  at  a  fountain,  forty 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER- WRITERS  103 

paces  from  my  house,  to  sing  and  dance.  But  what  per- 
suades me  more  fully  of  my  decease  is  the  situation  of  my 
own  mind,  the  profound  ignorance  I  am  in  of  what  passes 
among  the  living  (which  only  comes  to  me  by  chance),  and 
the  great  calmness  with  which  I  receive  it.  Yet  I  have  still 
a  hankering  after  my  friends  and  acquaintances  left  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  And  'tis  very  necessary  to  make  a  perfect 
Elysium  that  there  should  be  a  River  Lethe,  which  I  am 
not  so  happy  as  to  find.  .  .  .  The  reflection  on  the  great 
gulph  between  you  and  me  cools  all  news  that  comes  hither. 
I  can  neither  be  sensibly  touched  writh  joy  nor  grief  when  I 
consider  that  possibly  the  cause  of  either  is  removed  before 
the  letter  comes  to  my  hands.' 

This  is  admirable  of  the  academic  kind,  the  charm  of 
which  lies  in  the  absence  of  strong  contrasts.  Lady  Mary 
never  sinks  below  cheerfulness,  or  gets  beyond  the  '  sprightly 
folly  '  she  '  thanks  God  she  was  born  with.'  Perhaps  the 
art  of  aphorism  suits  her  best  of  all.  '  Our  proverb  that 
knowledge  is  no  burden  may  be  true  as  to  oneself,'  she 
writes,  '  but  knowing  too  much  is  apt  to  make  one  trouble- 
some to  other  people.'  Or,  '  We  are  little  better  than 
straws  upon  the  water ;  we  may  flatter  ourselves  that  we 
swim,  when  the  current  carries  us  along.'  Or,  '  Does  not 
King  David  say  somewhere  that  man  walketh  in  a  vain 
show  ?  '  she  writes  on  another  occasion  ;  '  I  think  he  does, 
and  I  am  sure  this  is  peculiarly  true  of  the  Frenchman  ;  but 
he  walks  merrily  and  seems  to  enjoy  the  vision,  and  may 
he  not  therefore  be  esteemed  more  happy  than  many  of 
our  solid  thinkers,  whose  brows  are  furrowed  by  deep  reflec- 
tion, and  whose  wisdom  is  so  often  clothed  with  a  rusty 
mantle  of  spleen  and  vapours  ?  ' 

If  Lady  Mary  was  born  scholarly  and  classical,  Dorothy 
Osborne,  her  predecessor  by  sixty  years,  was  born  classical 
and  natural.  The  daughter  of  a  Cavalier  and  plighted  to 
a  Roundhead's  son,  she  has  about  her  style  a  kind  of  sober 


104  NEW  AND  OLD 

grace  which  seems  to  express  her  relation  to  both  parties. 
Besides,  she  lived  within  hail  of  the  Elizabethans,  and  her 
words  '  have  the  dew  still  upon  them.'  She  is  a  dainty 
preacher,  and  nurses  wisdom  with  a  kind  of  maternal  tender- 
ness ;  the  thoughts  that  she  sends  forth  from  the  lonely 
Bedfordshire  home,  where  she  tends  a  sick  father  and  pacifies 
a  quarrelsome  brother,  are  scented  with  lavender.  There 
can  be  no  more  pleasant  contrast  than  that  between  Lady 
Mary's  Ottoman  Elysium  and  Dorothy  Osborne's  English 
Arcadia.  '  About  six  or  seven  o'clock,'  she  writes,  '  I  walk 
out  into  a  common  that  lies  hard  by  the  house,  where  a 
great  many  young  wenches  keep  sheep  and  cows,  and  sit 
in  the  shade  singing  of  ballads.  I  talk  to  them,  and  find 
they  want  nothing  to  make  them  the  happiest  people  in 
the  world  but  the  knowledge  that  they  are  so.  Most  com- 
monly, when  we  are  in  the  midst  of  our  discourse,  one  looks 
about  her  and  spies  her  cows  going  into  the  com,  and  then 
away  they  all  run,  as  if  they  had  wings  at  their  heels.' 

But  Dorothy  Osborne  really  belongs  to  the  intimate 
letter-writers  and  wrote  for  one  eye  alone — that  of  her 
betrothed,  Sir  William  Temple.  Her  letters,  properly 
speaking,  form  part  of  the  most  personal  of  all  provinces, 
that  of  love-letters  and  letters  of  sentiment ;  but  she  writes 
as  a  wife  rather  than  as  a  lover,  and  this  is  as  well  for  the 
reader.  Ego'isme  a  deux  is  as  unallowable  and  as  tedious 
in  correspondence  as  it  is  in  society,  and  the  most  charming 
letters  are  those  that  introduce  us  to  a  hospitable  and 
friendly  circle.  Dorothy  Osborne  was  at  once  too  modest 
and  too  observant  to  be  guilty  of  egoism.  She  liked  to 
know  many  people  of  different  kinds,  and  described,  or 
rather  suggested  them  with  a  pretty  humour  of  her  own. 
Her  mind  has  an  English  climate,  and  though  her  pages 
are  rich  in  tender  expressions  of  love,  they  still  keep  the 
temperate  sweetness  of  an  English  landscape.  She  reminds 
us  of  one  of  Shakespeare's  gentler  heroines,  in  whom  devo- 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER- WRITERS  105 

tion  and  fidelity  take  the  place  of  passion,  and  playfulness 
that  of  spirits.  '  Tis  not  that  I  am  sad,'  she  says,  '  I  thank 
God  I  have  no  occasion  to  be  so,  but  I  never  appear  to  be 
very  merry,  and  if  I  had  all  I  could  wish  for  in  the  world  I 
do  not  think  it  would  make  any  visible  change  in  my  humour.' 

If  we  want  a  more  fervid  feeling  we  must  go  to  France 
in  the  last  century ;  the  letters  of  Madame  d'Epinay,  for 
instance,  are  a  Journal  of  Sensibility,  though  not  of  Despair. 
We  shall  find  that  quality  in  the  letters  of  Heloise  to  Abelard 
— in  1131 — terrible  and  beautiful  in  their  concentration  ; 
or  if  we  seek  chronicles  less  remote,  there  are  the  corre- 
spondences of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse,  once  Madame 
du  Deffand's  '  companion,'  or  of  Madame  Desbordes  Valmore 
in  our  own  day.  Letters  of  passion  should  never  be  collected 
in  a  volume,  and  not  more  than  two  or  three  from  the  same 
person  should  be  read,  for  passion  is  naturally  monotonous. 
The  death  song  of  the  swan  is  a  beautiful  thing,  but  when 
he  goes  on  singing  ad  infinitum  without  dying,  it  becomes 
tiresome.  The  right  medium  for  the  expression  of  passion 
is  poetry,  which  arrests  thought  and  feeling  at  white  heat 
and  crystallises  it,  compelling  it  to  brevity.  Madame  Des- 
bordes Valmore's  love  poems,  for  example,  are  much  finer 
interpretations  of  love  than  her  letters  on  the  same  theme, 
which  are  so  intense  as  to  become  oppressive. 

As  far  as  style  goes,  the  love  letters  of  Mademoiselle  de 
Lespinasse  to  M.  Guibert  may  be  taken  as  a  model  of  elo- 
quence and  of  fiery  grace.  She  is  in  turns  reckless  and 
restrained,  and  there  is  something  splendid — something  of 
the  grand  manner — in  the  way  she  risks  herself,  in  her 
prodigal  and  daring  simplicity.  '  Cette  ame  de  feu  et  de 
douleur,  e'est  votre  creation,'  she  writes  to  her  lover ; 
'  l'esprit  trouve  des  mots,  l'ame  aurait  besoin  de  trouver 
une  langue  nouvelle.'  But  with  the  best  will  in  the  world 
one  is  wearied  by  these  pages  of  egoism — egoisme  a  une  in 
this  case — and  it  is  difficult  to  sympathise  with  a  woman 


106  NEW  AND  OLD 

who  kept  a  pair  of  passions  ;  who  was  broken-hearted  about 
her  first  love  (then  dying  of  consumption)  when  she  adopted 
her  second,  to  whom  all  these  letters  (one  hundred  and 
eighty  in  two  years)  were  addressed. 

There  is  another  kind  of  personal  confession,  often  as 
self-centred  as  the  love  letter,  but  deeper  and  of  far  wider 
interest — the  letter  of  religious  experience.  It  is  dangerous 
to  remove  the  spiritual  from  the  realms  of  the  imagination 
to  those  of  colloquial  prose  and  colloquial  imagery,  where 
materialism  too  often  overtakes  it,  as  evangelical  corre- 
spondences abundantly  testify.  It  would  perhaps  be  better 
if  religious  letters  also  could  be  turned  into  poetry,  or  at 
least  written  by  poets.  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  whose  poems 
deserve  to  be  better  known,  has  given  us  letters  which 
fulfil  this  condition,  and  show  us  how  graceful,  how  hospit- 
able religion  can  be ;  pages  rich  in  spiritual  delicacy,  and 
therefore  impossible  to  quote  from  without  injuring  them. 
It  is  equally  difficult  to  cite  the  correspondence  of  Madame 
Guyon,  the  reactionary  saint  of  Louis  xiv.'s  reign,  not 
because  it  is  too  subtle,  but  because  it  is  too  rhapsodical. 
It  is  full  of  startling  effects,  for  she  was  a  mystic  of  intense 
inward  vision,  and  therefore  a  realist  about  the  unreal, 
and  over-familiar  with  the  invisible. 

Madame  Swetchine  and  Caroline  Fox  should  hardly  be 
reckoned  amongst  religious  letter-writers,  although  they 
wrote  religiously.  Both  lived  on  the  borderland  of  religion, 
but  their  atmosphere  is  more  intellectual  than  that  of  the 
religious  world,  and  their  intellect  was  foremost  in  the 
search  after  truth.  The  writer  really  representing  this  sort 
of  metaphysical  correspondence  is  Sara  Coleridge,  who 
inherited  her  father's  voracity  for  abstraction  even  in 
doctrine.  Her  letters  can  scarcely  be  called  letters — they 
are  treatises  ;  far  from  falling  into  Madame  Guyon's  error, 
they  make  even  the  visible  invisible  and  obscure  it  by  a 
fog  of  speculation. 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER- WRITERS  107 

The  history  of  letter-writing  would  make  an  interesting 
volume  ;  like  the  history  of  comedy  it  is  practically  that 
of  society,  and  a  good  letter  is  an  epitome  of  civilisation. 
The  letter  of  feeling,  whether  of  passion  or  religion,  is  the 
most  primitive  expression  of  the  art,  as  Abelard  and  Helo'ise 
testify  ;  and  it  is  only  as  family  grows  and  expands  into 
social  life  that  amusing  letters  become  possible.  The  Paston 
letters  in  Caxton's  time  are  the  first,  and  there  are  others 
that  date  from  Elizabethan  days  and  abound  in  Elizabethan 
grace  ;  but  their  interest  is  mostly  historical,  and  they  do 
little  to  disclose  character.  The  personal  letter  can  only 
come  later,  when  personality  has  room  to  develop  and 
culture  has  affected  women  as  well  as  men.  Nearly  all 
the  letter-writing  of  women  is  due  to  the  last  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  and  during  that  period  they  have  written  every 
kind  of  letter,  excepting  that  of  whims  and  crotchets,  for 
which  their  minds  are  perhaps  too  constant ;  a  Charles 
Lamb,  an  Edward  FitzGerald,  has  never  yet  been  translated 
into  the  feminine.  The  most  difficult  letter  to  write,  and 
the  one  generally  best  unwritten,  is  certainly  the  letter  on 
Nature.  The  Lake  school,  including  Dorothy  Wordsworth, 
were  alone  adequate  to  it.  Since  their  time  one  or  two 
others  have  partially  succeeded,  but  on  the  whole  who 
would  not  exclaim  with  Mrs.  Carlyle  :  '  Oh,  my  dear  !  if 
"all  about  feelings"  be  bad  in  a  letter,  all  about  scenery  and 
no  feelings  is  a  deal  worse  !'...'  Such  a  letter,'  she  goes 
on,  '  as  I  received  from  you  yesterday,  after  much  half 
anxious,  half  angry  waiting  for,  will  read  charmingly  in 
your  biography,  and  may  be  quoted  in  Murray's  Guide 
Book ;  but  for  "  me,  as  one  solitary  individual,"  I  was  not 
charmed  with  it  at  all.' 

Mrs.  Carlyle,  at  any  rate,  could  not  have  existed  in  any 
century  but  her  own,  any  more  than  the  sort  of  human 
letter  which  she  creates  for  us.  She  inverts  Jeffrey's  advice 
to  young  writers,  '  If  you  think  you  have  a  good  thing  to 


108  NEW  AND  OLD 

say  don't  say  it,'  for  she  never  thinks  she  has  a  good  thing 
to  say,  and  always  says  it.  More  almost  than  any  other 
woman  letter-writer  she  has  humour,  the  most  personal  of 
all  qualities  and  the  most  modern,  for  it  grows  with  our 
taste  for  character-study  and  our  sense  of  life's  incongruities. 
Too  many  things  have  already  been  said  about  humour  and 
its  relation  to  wit,  but  thus  much  may,  perhaps,  be  hazarded 
here :  humour  is  an  atmosphere  of  the  mind ;  humour  is 
colour,  wit  is  form  ;  humour  has  to  do  with  the  character, 
wit  with  the  head.  Madame  du  Deffand  and  Lady  Mary 
wrote  letters  essentially  witty ;  Mrs.  Carlyle  does  not  so 
often  condense  her  humour  into  wit,  but  she  can  do  so 
whenever  she  wishes.  She  writes  on  one  occasion  that  she 
is  not  up  to  visitors,  not  even  to  '  an  angel  awares,'  like  G., 
and  one  might  quote  a  dozen  more  of  her  racy  phrases. 
Humorous  description,  however,  is  what  she  enjoys,  and 
the  peculiar  flavour  of  her  humour  is  that  it  attaches  itself 
mostly  to  the  limitations  of  existence  and  to  minute  domestic 
drawbacks.  '  She  is  not  what  is  called  a  thorough  servant,' 
she  says  of  one  of  her  many  '  generals,' '  but  that  will  be  no 
objection  to  signify,  as  I  am  not  a  thorough  lady,  which 
Grace  Macdonald  defined  to  be  "  one  who  had  not  entered 
her  own  kitchen  for  seven  years."  ' 

Nothing  can  be  more  succinct  than  her  humour,  and  yet 
no  letters  seem  more  haphazard — it  is  one  of  their  chief 
charms.  The  fact  is  she  was  a  great  artist  in  her  own  way, 
and  her  power  of  selection  was  instinctive, — a  much  more 
finished  production  than  when  it  is  artificial.  She  was 
quite  as  good  a  housekeeper  of  her  wits  as  of  her  home. 
'  It  is  not  only  a  faculty  with  me,'  she  says,  '  but  a  necessity 
of  my  nature  to  make  a  great  deal  out  of  nothing.'  Her 
thrift  is  like  that  of  the  bee  ;  she  darts  into  the  centre  of 
each  subject  she  touches,  and  returns  with  its  honey  packed 
into  the  smallest  possible  space.  She  can  be  bold,  too, 
and  vivid  in  a  large  way  when  she  attempts  large  subjects, 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER-WRITERS  109 

as,  for  instance,  in  her  description  of  Father  Mathew's 
Temperance  Meeting  in  the  East  End  ;  and,  like  most 
humorists,  she  can  be  sentimental — none  more  so. 

'  Blessed  be  the  inventor  of  photography  ! '  she  writes  ; 
'  I  set  him  above  even  the  inventor  of  chloroform.  It  has 
given  more  positive  pleasure  to  poor  suffering  humanity 
than  anything  that  has  "  cast  up  "  in  my  time,  or  is  like  to, 
this  art  by  winch  even  the  "  poor  "  can  possess  themselves 
of  tolerable  likenesses  of  their  absent  dear  ones.  And  mustn't 
it  be  acting  favourably  on  the  morality  of  the  country  ?  I 
assure  you  I  have  often  gone  into  my  own  room  in  the  devil's 
own  humour — ready  to  swear  at  "  things  in  general  "  and 
some  things  in  particular — and,  my  eyes  resting  by  chance  on 
one  of  my  photographs  of  long-ago  places  or  people,  a  crowd 
of  sad  gentle  thoughts  has  rushed  into  my  heart,  and  driven 
the  devil  out,  as  clean  as  ever  so  much  holy  water  and  priestly 
exorcisms  could  have  done.' 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  Mrs.  Carlyle  just  falls  short  of  the 
poetic ;  the  sense  of  poetry  was  the  one  mental  equipment 
she  did  not  possess,  and  if  she  had  possessed  it  she  would 
oftener  have  been  able  to  look  beyond  the  moment.  '  You 
are  the  most  concrete  woman  I  have  ever  known,  Jane,' 
a  friend  once  said  to  her ;  and  '  concrete,'  not  '  matter  of 
fact,'  is  the  word  which  expresses  her. 

The  same  epithet  might,  with  equal  justice,  be  applied  to 
another  letter- writer  and  another  '  Jane  ' — Jane  Austen. 
In  some  ways  she  may  be  compared  to  Mrs.  Carlyle.  Her 
mind  also  enjoys  playing  upon  the  limitations  and  incon- 
veniences of  daily  existence  with  sustained  vivacity.  But 
in  her  case,  form,  neatness,  and  occasionally  wit  are  more 
prominent  than  humorous  description.  She  had  not  so 
rich  a  nature  as  Mrs.  Carlyle,  and  needed  her  own  creations 
to  bring  out  her  full  brilliance.  Her  letters  are  sprightly 
but  rather  cold  chronicles  of  family  plans,  illnesses,  meals, 
acquaintances — here  and  there  enriched  by  flashes  of  fun 


110  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  epigram  and  by  the  almost  imperceptible  threads  of  her 
cobweb  malice,  in  which  she  caught  so  many  buzzing  flies. 
She  is  perfect  in  the  art  of  implication,  and  nobody  can  imply 
a  bore  as  mercilessly  as  she  does.  '  A  widower  with  three 
children,'  she  writes,  '  has  no  right  to  look  higher  than  his 
daughter's  governess  ' ;  '  I  am  forced  to  be  abusive  for  want  of 
subject,  having  really  nothing  to  say.'  Here  are  a  few  of  her 
nothings  :  '  Charles  Powlett  has  been  very  ill,  but  is  getting 
well  again.  His  wife  is  discovered  to  be  everything  that  the 
neighbourhood  could  wish  for,  silly  and  cross  as  well  as 
extravagant.'  '  At  the  bottom  of  the  Kingsdown  Hill  we 
met  a  gentleman  in  a  buggy  who,  on  minute  examination, 
turned  out  to  be  Dr.  Hall,  in  such  very  deep  mourning  that 
either  his  mother,  his  wife,  or  himself  must  be  dead.' 
'  We  had  a  Miss  North  and  a  Mr.  Gould  of  our  party  ;  the 
latter  walked  home  with  me  after  tea.  He  is  a  very  young 
man,  just  entered  Oxford,  wears  spectacles,  and  has  heard 
that  Evelina  was  written  by  Dr.  Johnson.' 

Miss  Austen  seldom  shows  her  sweeter  side  in  her  letters, 
but,  when  she  does,  her  sweetness  has  a  brilliance  which  gives 
it  a  charming  distinction.  Most  of  them  were  written  to  her 
beloved  sister  Cassandra,  during  their  yearly  separations. 
If  they  are  sometimes  monotonous  in  their  detail,  they 
certainly  have  the  virtue  of  absolute  spontaneity.  Nobody 
could  detect  a  genius  in  them,  still  less  the  genius  of  the 
family.  There  are  few  letters  from  famous  women  of  which 
this  can  be  said.  Those  of  Charlotte  Bronte  and  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing are  indeed  equally  unconscious  ;  but  Miss  Bronte's 
letters  are  more  characteristic  of  the  whole  woman  than  Miss 
Austen's — of  her  passion  and  her  austerity — while  in  Mrs. 
Browning's  we  are  aware  of  the  poet,  beside  the  lovable 
companion. 

There  is  a  very  different  sort  of  letter  written  by  the  great 
— more  edifying  and  less  intimate — which,  for  want  of  a 
better  term,  may  be  called  the  Sibylline  letter.     Madame  de 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER-WRITERS  111 

Stael  was  probably  its  first  parent,  but  she  is  too  much  of  a 
Muse  to  be  reckoned  with,  and  George  Sand  is  the  High 
Priestess  who  has  given  us  the  best  of  such  oracles,  a  High 
Priestess  rich  in  human  love  for  human  correspondents. 
Beautiful  thoughts  on  Life  and  Death  and  Immortality, 
tender  wisdom,  eloquent  political  outbursts  and  pleadings 
for  freedom— j>uch  is  the  poetry  in  prose  which  makes  up  her 
correspondence.  It  is  unsatisfactory  to  give  fragments  of  it, 
and  her  letters  should  be  read  as  wholes.  The  same  cannot 
be  said  of  George  Eliot's  correspondence,  for  she  is  a  Sibyl 
too  deeply  versed  in  German  philosophy,  too  much  weighed 
down  by  the  responsibilities  of  utterance,  to  make  a  letter- 
writer.  It  is  often  the  Minor  Prophetesses  who  have  the 
finer  turn  for  expression — Fanny  Kemble,  for  instance, 
whose  letters  frequently  have  the  Delphic  ring.  But  they 
are  always  natural,  always  abundant,  and  enrich  us  with  the 
wealth  of  her  varied  experience. 

There  is  one  large  region  of  letter-writing  which  remains 
to  be  touched  on,  a  region  which  lies  between  the  unconscious 
intimate  letter  and  the  conscious  literary  one,  and  partakes 
of  both  ;  this  is  the  world  of  social  letters,  and  social  letters 
are  identical  with  the  graceful  correspondence  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  in  England.  It  was  the  only  time  when  our 
reserved  island  could  boast  of  an  outburst  of  letter-writing. 
French  influence,  French  expression,  and  travels  in  France 
were  then  the  fashion,  and  no  doubt  intercourse  with  our 
neighbours  schooled  our  taste  and  taught  us  to  formulate 
more  readily.  The  practice  of  letter-writing  was  almost 
as  universal  as  in  Madame  du  Deffand's  France,  and  much 
less  self-conscious  than  in  her  circles.  Like  their  French 
contemporaries,  too,  these  English  letters  are  typical  rather 
than  individual.  If  one  had  to  express  them  by  a  single 
comprehensive  epithet,  one  would  choose  the  word  '  sprightly.' 
'  Sprightly  '  often  rises  to  '  brilliant,'  and  that  not  only  in 
the  best  hands.     The  great  Hannah  More,  Miss  Burney,  and 


112  NEW  AND  OLD 

Mrs.  Piozzi  amaze  us  by  the  vitality  of  their  pens  ;  but  many 
of  the  less  known  ladies,  Maria  Holroyd  and  Mrs.  Boscawen 
in  particular,  are  not  far  behind,  and  there  does  not  seem  to 
be  one  of  them  who  was  guilty  of  a  dull  page.  They  always 
write  letters  '  of  the  news  sort,'  never  of  '  the  inner-woman 
sort ' — purely  external  chronicles  of  external  things  described 
with  animation  and  intelligence. 

Most  of  the  charmers  of  that  time  knew  the  same  people 
and  had  the  same  tastes  as  well  as  the  same  style,  so  that  it 
is  often  hard  for  the  reader  to  tell  one  from  another.  Beside 
the  Drums  and  Routs,  the  quizzings  and  scandals,  and  all 
the  gay  bustle  which  go  on  in  their  correspondence,  it  is  also 
full  of  the  fashionable  curiosity  about  travellers  and  remote 
facts  from  foreign  lands.  '  Miss  Harris,  I  hope,'  writes  one 
lady,  '  will  tell  you  next  winter  how  she  skaited  [sic]  through 
the  northern  climate  almost  to  every  Court  over  frozen  seas.' 
Miss  Harris  and  her  '  skaiting '  were  doubtless  discussed  in 
twenty  drawing-rooms,  over  twenty  cups  of  bohea.  Those 
were  elegant  days,  when  the  object  of  life  was  '  to  be  enter- 
tained,' and  even  Captain  Cook  and  his  savages  were  de- 
scribed elegantly  ;  days  so  elegant,  indeed,  that  we  find  one 
of  Hannah  More's  feminine  correspondents  anxious  to  address 
her  as  Hercules,  but  refraining  on  the  score  of  delicacy. 

All  these  writers  belonged  to  distinguished  circles,  and 
the  real  value  of  their  letters  lies  in  their  familiar  pictures 
of  great  men  and  of  great  events.  Their  pages  are  pages  of 
history,  and  as  such  they  should  be  read.  The  presentation 
of  some  striking  scene  shows  them,  perhaps,  at  their  best ; 
such,  for  example,  as  the  trial  of  Warren  Hastings,  which 
Hannah  More  witnessed.  '  Poor  Hastings,'  she  wrote, 
'  sitting  and  looking  so  meek,  to  hear  himself  called  "  villain  ' 
and  "  cut-throat."  .  .  .  The  orator  (Edmund  Burke)  was 
seized  with  a  spasm  .  .  .  and  I  did  not  know  whether  he 
might  not  have  died  in  the  exertion  of  his  powers,  like 
Chatham.' 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER-WRITERS  118 

'Mrs.'  More's  correspondence  is  not  nearly  so  well  known 
as  Miss  Burney's,  and  yet,  though  its  writer  is  not  so  attrac- 
tive, it  is  quite  as  sparkling  and  representative.  No  one  had 
better  matter  for  her  letters.  Until  her  conversion  in  early 
middle  age,  she  led  a  life  as  brilliant  as  it  was  possible  for  a 
Sabbatarian  to  lead  ;  and  a  great  deal  of  brilliance  can  be 
put  into  six  days  out  of  seven.  She  spent  several  months 
of  each  year  with  the  Garricks — who  adored  her— -met 
everybody  of  interest,  and  spent  her  nights,  as  she  tells  us, 
'  raking  it '  in  a  hackney  coach  with  Dr.  Johnson,  or  hearing 
him  talk  at  Sir  Joshua's.  She  was  a  thorough  bluestocking 
and  much  enjoyed  stately  badinage  with  Bishops,  or  Gothic 
compliments  from  periwigged  divines. 

Blow,  blow,  my  sweetest  rose, 

For  Hannah  More  will  soon  be  here  ! 

so  writes  the  learned  Dr.  Langhorne  to  her,  and  her  letters 
to  him  are  as  liturgically  flirtatious  as  he  could  desire.  Pier 
correspondence  does  not  show  much  change  even  after  her 
conversion,  for  she  was  one  of  those  fortunate  people  who 
can  regard  their  social  position  as  a  Means  of  Grace,  and  the 
more  she  used  it  the  holier  she  felt.  When  a  couple  of 
illustrious  Turks  came  to  visit  her,  she  writes,  they  sat  down 
on  the  carpet  and  tried  to  convert  her  to  the  Koran,  in  return 
for  which  attention  she  pressed  White's  Sermons  upon  them. 
It  is  true  she  had  some  passing  qualms  about  Horace  Walpole's 
free-thought,  but  she  continued  her  witty  budgets  to  him 
on  the  chance  of  their  effecting  his  reform — unlike  her  French 
rival,  who  would  have  written  for  the  opposite  purpose. 
The  sincere  Evangelicalism  of  this  busy  and  popular  Pharisee 
makes  her  letters  rather  distincter,  perhaps  also  more 
amusing,  than  those  of  her  amiable  compeers ;  and  her 
copious  sheets  to  her  courtiers,  who  were  often  of  her  own 
sex,  can  be  safely  recommended  as  excellent  company  for  a 
solitary  evening  by  the  fire. 

H 


114  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  publication  of  family  correspondence  has  lately  come 
into  vogue,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  it  may  continue.  We  have 
had  the  private  letters  of  the  Verney  family,  and  also  those 
of  the  Newdegate  ladies,  first  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  then 
in  the  time  of  the  Georges.1  These  simple  communications 
from  unknown  people  make  quite  as  valuable  a  chapter  in 
social  history  as  the  letters  of  celebrities  ;  more  so,  perhaps, 
because  they  are  not  brilliant  and  only  give  us  a  picture  of 
comfortable  average  people.  Public  spirit  is  a  rare  and  may 
be  a  conceited  quality  ;  as  a  motive  for  correspondence  it  is, 
at  any  rate,  impossible.  But  how  charming  would  it  be  if, 
from  any  motive  whatever,  more  members  of  more  families 
would  write  full  chronicles  of  their  doings— and  if  other 
members  would  keep  them  !  The  clothes,  the  walks,  the 
jam-making — even  the  jam-eating — of  a  hundred  years  ago 
are  vitally  interesting.  It  requires,  of  course,  much  greater 
self-suppression  to  figure  namelessly  as  one  of  many  corre- 
spondents than  to  write  a  novel,  the  unfailing  vent  for  every 
young  lady  with  a  pen.  But  then  there  is  this  compensation : 
a  letter  is  bound  to  give  pleasure  at  least  to  one,  but  there  is 
no  such  certainty  about  a  novel. 

The  qualities  too  which  mar  a  book  may  often  make  a 
letter ;  and  letter-writing  is  the  legitimate  channel  for 
immediate  expression,  of  which  women  feel  so  much  greater 
a  need  than  men.  Then  it  is  a  craft  which  is  peculiarly 
adapted  to  a  woman's  avocations  and  the  life  of  little  inter- 
ruptions which  usually  falls  to  her  lot.  There  is  no  solemn 
thread  of  Fate  to  spin  when  we  take  up  our  correspondence — 
no  thread,  indeed,  that  we  may  not  comfortably  lose,  and 
find  again  half  an  hour  later.  Letter-writing  has  another 
advantage  :  it  fulfils  the  first  condition  of  any  feminine 
occupation  ;  it  includes  men  and  admits  of  all  the  finer 
shades  of  their  relations  to  women.     It  is  an  interesting 

1  Gossip  from  a  Muniment  Room  and  The  Cheverels  of  Cheverel  Manor, 
both  edited  by  Lady  Newdegate. 


WOMEN  AS  LETTER- WRITERS  115 

question  whether  women  write  best  to  men  or  to  women,  and 
one  which  either  sex  will  probably  settle  differently.  It.  is 
evident  enough  that  men  write  best  to  women,  for  women 
alone  have  power  to  draw  out  their  tenderer  side — to  make 
them  most  themselves.  But,  excepting  in  love-letters,  it  is 
just  this  side  which  disappears  when  women  write  to  men  ; 
chameleon-like,  they  try  to  write  from  the  brain,  to  condense 
more,  to  become  less  personal,  and  consequently  least  them- 
selves. Such  letters  are  more  artistic  than  those  they  send 
to  each  other,  but  they  have  not  the  frankness  and  vitality 
that  these  possess.  Lady  Mary  is  nicer  when  she  writes 
to  her  sister  or  daughter  than  when  she  writes  to  Pope  ;  and 
Mrs.  Carlylc  reveals  herself  more  vividly  in  her  letters  to  her 
Scottish  women  friends  than  in  those  to  Sterling  and  to 
Forster. 

However  that  may  be,  a  paper  such  as  this  can  have  but 
one  ending,  a  plea  for  the  Employment  of  the  Pen.  Every- 
body knows  the  reasons  against  it.  There  is  no  School  of 
Art  where  we  can  all  learn  it  and  take  ourselves  seriously  ; 
there  is  no  leisure ;  and  there  are  newspapers,  railway 
trains,  high  pressure — those  often-quoted  lions  in  the  way. 
But,  after  all,  there  is  a  constant  demand  for  the  revival 
of  other  and  less  useful  crafts — handlooms,  lace-making, 
and  the  like.  Why  not  then  for  that  of  letter-writing,  which 
cannot  fail,  as  these  do,  because  of  insufficient  funds  ? 
There  is  no  real  reason  why  the  women  of  to-day  should  not 
produce  as  good  letters  as  their  great-grandmothers,  and 
every  reason  why  they  should.  And  if  they  have  grown  too 
far-seeing  to  write  for  the  moment  and  need  a  nobler  purpose, 
let  them  write  for  the  poor  unamused  '  unborn  generations  ' 
who  will  have  nothing  but  postcards  to  divert  them.    (1899.) 


A  FRENCH   GOVERNESS 

The  race  of  governesses  is  now  almost  extinct,  driven  out 
by  the  invading  hordes  of  university  teachers.  The  gover- 
ness of  the  last  generation — the  lady  born  in  Central  Germany 
and  offended  about  many  things — she  who  taught  the 
glorious  motions  of  the  universe  by  means  of  an  orange  and 
a  knitting-needle — is  fast  disappearing  from  the  planet 
that  she  dealt  with  thus  intimately.  If  only  there  were 
time  and  space  to  write  about  every  interesting  subject, 
some  one  might  give  us  a  remarkable  book  on  the  Evolution 
of  Governesses.  It  is  a  more  fruitful  theme  than  would  at 
first  sight  appear,  for  governesses  have  gone  through  many 
periods.  They  seem  to  have  begun  in  France,  where,  as 
early  as  the  fifteenth  century,  we  read  of  the  Court  Chaperone 
or  '  Gouvernante,'  who  superintended  the  '  Chamber  of  the 
Damsels  '  and  never  left  them  except  at  the  approach  of 
their  confessor.  She  taught  no  more  than  intricate  needle- 
work and  the  proprieties,  existed  nowhere  outside  the  Court, 
and  was  but  the  rudest  foreshadowing  of  the  ladies  who 
succeeded  her  some  two  hundred  years  later.  For  the  hey- 
day of  governesses — their  zenith  of  opportunity — was  in 
the  France  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  : 
the  France  that  produced  Madame  de  Maintenon,  Madame 
de  Genlis,  Madame  de  Campari.  These  names — at  any 
rate,  the  first  two — prove  that  there  have  been  immortal 
governesses  as  well  as  immortal  poets  ;  and  it  is  fitting 
that  France,  the  home  of  deportment,  should  have  been 
their  birthplace. 

Madame  de  Maintenon  was  so  much  made  of  in  her  life- 

116 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  117 

time  that  posterity  owes  her  nothing,  and  is  perhaps  justified 
in  behaving  somewhat  coldly  to  her  memory.  Love  il 
would  be  difficult  to  give  her  :  amazed  curiosity  and  admira- 
tion of  her  dignity  and  her  distinction  are  the  warmest 
feelings  that  she  inspires,  whether  as  the  toiling  wife  and 
secretary  of  the  scholar  Scarron,  the  Court  Governess,  the 
Mother  of  the  Church,  the  Abbess  of  St.  Cyr,  or  the  consort 
and  widow  of  the  King. 

'  There  is  nothing  so  agreeable  as  to  make  oneself  esteemed,' 
she  once  wrote  to  her  brother;  and  Sainte-Beuve,  with  his 
customary  insight,  puts  her  character  into  a  nutshell  when 
he  says  that  she  was  '  always  occupied  with  others  and 
never  loved  them.'  Like  him,  we  feel  her  charm  while  we 
are  reading  her  letters  ;  but  directly  we  shut  the  book  the 
charm  disappears.  Still  a  life  of  consistent  self-sacrifice 
and  self-discipline,  with  self  in  the  guise  of  influence  as  its 
object,  is  rare  enough  to  command  our  respect ;  and  so 
does  her  strong  but  fastidious  will,  which  was  not  content 
with  gaining  whatever  it  strove  for,  unless  it  achieved  its 
purpose  in  the  best  possible  taste. 

Her  stoiy  reads  like  a  political  fairy  tale.  She  was  born 
in  a  Poitou  prison  in  1635.  Her  father,  son  of  the  great 
Calvinist,  D'Aubigne,  was  a  rake  and  a  ne'er-do-weel,  his 
father's  despair — a  political  and  aristocratic  Micawber 
who  was  never  out  of  a  scrape.  Her  mother,  on  the  other 
hand,  was  a  devote  and  a  Stoic,  with  fine  practical  faculties 
— a  stern  fidelity  to  duty — and  real  depth,  though  little 
grace,  of  heart.  She  was  glad  to  place  the  baby  Francoise 
with  her  Huguenot  sister-in-law,  Madame  de  Villette,  who 
brought  up  the  child  in  the  Reformed  faith  till  she  was 
seven  years  old.  Then  she  returned  home,  an  eager  little 
Protestant,  willing  to  take  the  maternal  buffets  for  non- 
observance  of  Catholic  rites  in  the  spirit  of  a  martyr. 

About  this  time  the  family  migrated  to  La  Martinique, 
in  the  West  Indies,  where  for  several  years  she  was  educated 


118  NEW  AND  OLD 

rather  severely  on  scant  means  and  Plutarch's  Lives.     It  is 
a  relief  to  hear  that  once,  when  the  house  caught  fire,  and 
her  mother  was  anxious  to  save  the  books,  she  was  found 
ciying  for  her  doll  and  its  toy  bed.     She  began  very  early 
to    have    adventures    in    the    grand    style.     Once,    on    the 
journey  out,  she  fell  ill,  was  said  to  have  died,  and  was  just 
about  to  be  lowered  into  the  sea  when  her  mother,  clasping 
her  for  the  last  time,  felt  a  faint  movement  that  convinced 
her  of  life.     Another  time  she  was  miraculously  saved  from 
a  serpent.     When   she  was  about  eleven  her  father  died 
penniless  ;    and  his  wife  and  children  returned  to  France, 
the  mother  to  engage  in  a  lawsuit  about  a  family  estate, 
the  little  girl  to  return  to  Madame  de  Villette  and  become 
a  stauncher  Protestant  than  before.     This  was  put  an  end 
to  by  her  mother's  sister,  Madame  de  Neuillant,  a  bigoted 
Catholic,  who  procured  an  order  from  Anne  of  Austria  to 
remove  her  from  heretical  influences  and  take  her  into  her 
own  care.     This  lady,  who  lived  on  her  country  estate  and 
was  very  rich,  combined  a  rather  sour  religion  with  provincial 
parsimony,  and  used  her  niece  as  a  servant.     Madame  de 
Maintenon  tells  us  she  was  sent  every  morning  into  the 
fields  in  a  peasant's  dress,  to  look  after  the  turkeys — work 
pleasant  enough  if  she  had  not  been  obliged  to  wear  a 
mask  for  her  complexion's  sake,  and  to  carry  a  volume  of 
Pibrac's   elegant   quatrains    to   learn   by   heart.     She   did 
menial  jobs  in  the  basse-cour  also,  quite  unconverted  mean- 
while, till  her  exasperated  aunt  ended  by  sending  her  to 
an  Ursuline  convent  in  Poitou.     She  was  eventually  con- 
verted at  fourteen  in  a  Paris  nunnery  of  the  same  sister- 
hood,   after   obstinate    discussions    with    eminent    divines. 
And  a  little  later  she  returned  home,  to  live  first  with  her 
poverty-stricken  mother  and  then  with  Madame  de  Neuillant. 
It  was  the  latter  who  introduced  her  to  the  paralysed  Abbe 
Scarron,  scholar,  sufferer,  wit,  buffoon,  who  had  expressed 
a  desire  to  see  '  la  jeune  Indienne,'  or  '  la  belle  Indienne,'  as 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  119 

she  was  subsequently  called.  When  she  entered  the  room, 
full  of  brilliant  guests,  and  met  their  stare  of  curiosity,  sh< 
became  conscious  that  her  stuff  frock — the  only  om  that  her 
aunt  allowed  her — was  far  too  short,  and  she  burst  into  tears. 
This  was  perhaps  the  most  impulsive  action  of  her  life  ;  per- 
haps, too,  the  only  occasion  on  which  her  vanity  was  wounded. 

She  could  not  have  begun  better  (though  this  time  her 
cleverness  was  unconscious)  than  by  inviting  the  compas- 
sion rather  than  the  jealousy  of  wits,  and  she  soon  became 
intimate  with  the  Scarron  circle.  Not  for  long,  however  ; 
for  when  she  was  about  fifteen  she  was  obliged  to  accom- 
pany her  mother,  whose  affairs  compelled  her  to  retire  to 
the  country  ;  and  shortly  afterwards  Madame  d'Aubigne 
died  there,  broken  down  and  almost  starving.  The  girl 
remained  where  she  was,  for  several  months,  alone,  and 
practically  destitute  but  for  the  Abbe  Scarron's  letters.  At 
the  end  of  the  fourth  month  (she  was  sixteen)  he  wrote  and 
begged  her  to  marry  him  :  an  offer  which  she  promptly 
accepted,  because,  as  she  afterwards  admitted,  acceptance 
was  better  than  going  into  a  convent. 

'  The  poor  cripple  '  was  the  phrase  with  which  in  later 
days  she  designated  her  husband,  and  it  expresses  her  whole 
attitude  towards  him — faithful,  attentive,  cold,  and  inde- 
fatigable. It  was  not  even  compassionate,  for  she  dis- 
approved of  the  jester's  mask  under  which  he  persistently 
hid  his  bodily  distress.  She  made  herself  his  secretary  (he 
was  one  of  the  first  men  of  letters  in  Paris),  and  often  wrote 
all  day  for  him,  trying,  as  she  takes  care  to  inform  us,  to 
modify  the  lightness  of  his  language.  The  cloven  hoof — 
or  should  we  call  it  the  winged  sandal  ? — of  her  influence 
began  to  appear,  and  she  felt  sure  that  with  him  she  had 
succeeded.  He,  on  the  other  hand,  took  pains  to  initiate 
her  into  the  habits  of  the  world,  and  produced  her  there  as 
if  she  were  some  choice  edition  of  one  of  his  favourite 
classics.     He  gave  her  great  opportunities.     All  the  best 


120  NEW  AND  OLD 

people  of  the  time  frequented  his  house,  the  grand  folk  and 
the  literary  ones  :  Ninon  de  l'Enclos,  the  Richelieus  and 
Albrets,  Madame  de  Sevigne,  Lafontaine,  Mademoiselle  de 
Scudery,  the  charming  Madame  de  Sabliere.  Madame 
Scarron  at  once  took  her  place  among  them.  She  was 
witty,  she  was  tactful,  she  was  tall  ;  she  had  a  beautiful 
figure,  chestnut  hair,  a  brilliant  complexion,  and  the  most 
speaking  black  eyes  in  the  world — so  says  Mademoiselle  de 
Scudery,  who  described  her  under  the  name  of  '  Lyriane.' 
Added  to  this,  she  had  a  certain  reserve  and  a  conventual 
charm  which  made  her  seem  more  piquant  to  this  world  of 
fashion.  These  would  have  availed  her  less,  however,  had 
she  not  possessed  the  invaluable  social  qualities  of  gaiety 
and  good  sense — supreme  good  sense,  we  may  say.  The 
quality  of  gaiety,  Sainte-Beuve  remarks,  is  the  one  which 
as  her  readers  we  do  not  recognise ;  a  good  deal  of  the 
charm  she  exercised  over  her  contemporaries  was  no  doubt 
due  to  it,  and  would  have  gone  far  to  soften  the  pontifical 
manner  of  her  writings.  '  Gay  by  nature,  sad  by  circum- 
stances,' she  said  of  herself  later,  in  her  Court  days ;  and 
the  '  nature  '  was  probably  more  conspicuous  in  her  youth. 

Curiously  enough,  of  all  the  galaxy  whom  she  entertained, 
it  was  Ninon  de  l'Enclos  who  took  her  up  the  most  warmly. 
'  Elle  etait  trop  gauche  pour  l'amour,'  said  Hemy  iv.'s 
dowager  mistress  of  Louis  xiv.'s  future  wife  ;  and  this  may 
possibly  have  been  the  secret  of  the  elder  lady's  friendship 
for  the  younger.  In  spite  of  this,  Mademoiselle  de  l'Enclos 
tried  to  blacken  Madame  Scarron  by  insinuations  about  her 
friendship  with  her  husband's  friend,  Villarceaux,  though 
even  Ninon  said  she  had  no  real  proof  of  her  guilt,  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  credit  this  single  accusation  against  her. 
She  herself — and  how  she  would  have  gloried  in  a  conquered 
temptation  ! — alludes  to  this  period  as  free  from  passion 
and  from  any  moral  trial. 

She  went  on  writing  gay  and  often  improper  epistles  in 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  121 

verse  at  her  husband's  dictation,  till  his  death  left  her, 
at  twenty-five,  an  attractive  and  almost  penniless  widow. 
After  much  delay,  a  pension  was  obtained  for  her  from  the 
King  ;  but  meanwhile  she  had  no  lack  of  friends.  Madame 
de  Richelieu,  most  fastidious  of  great  ladies,  adopted  her  as 
one  of  the  family,  and  she  lodged  near  the  Richelieu  Hotel. 
The  Marechal  and  Marechale  d'Albret  hastened  to  show  her 
an  equal  affection  ;  all  her  acquaintance  followed  suit.  She 
had,  as  in  later  days  she  was  particular  to  impress  on  the 
young  ladies  at  St.  Cyr,  a  special  talent  for  making  herself 
invaluable  in  a  household.  In  her  lecture  to  the  '  Classe 
Bleue  '  on  how  to  make  oneself  loved,  she  gives  the  recipe  on 
which  she  acted  :  never  to  talk  of  oneself,  always  to  dis- 
cover— if  possible,  to  forestall — the  wants  of  others,  to  be 
pleased  with  everything  and  turn  one's  hand  to  any  task, 
to  expect  nothing  and  resent  no  neglect :  all  the  Christian 
duties,  in  fact,  performed  from  motives  of  good  taste.  The 
discipline  of  taste  is  perhaps  severer,  drier,  less  rewarded, 
than  the  discipline  of  religion  ;  and  it  needed  something 
like  sweetness,  at  any  rate  a  large  amenity,  to  enable  her  to 
practise  her  precepts.  But  she  possessed,  in  a  still  greater 
degree,  an  instinct  for  calculation,  which,  in  her  case, 
amounted  to  genius.  All  through  her  life  it  was  her  creed 
that,  failing  the  religious  motive,  the  desire  for  reputation  was 
as  good  as  any  other  and  ought  to  be  earnestly  cultivated. 
Years  afterwards,  when  she  was  over  seventy,  she  told  the 
same  pupils  at  St.  Cyr  that  at  this  early  time  in  her  career 
she  performed  her  deeds  of  virtue — even  nursed  a  poor  man 
through  the  smallpox — from  no  love  of  God,  but  because 
she  wished  her  goodness  to  be  different  from  that  of  other 
people.  She  actually  records  that  on  one  occasion  she  de- 
liberately made  herself  ill,  and  then  went  out  to  pay  a  visit — 
in  the  hope  that  she  would  hear  her  friends  exclaim,  '  What 
a  courageous  woman  !  ' — but  she  only  ended  in  feeling  so 
faint  that  she  had  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat. 


122  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  restraint  she  imposed  on  herself  was  the  more  sur- 
prising because  she  had  a  brilliant  tongue  which  loved  to 
amuse — and  did  amuse  till  1666,  when  first  she  came  into 
contact  with  the  Abbe  Gobelin,  the  man  who  became  her 
Director,  and  occupied  that  post  for  the  greater  part  of  her 
Court  life.  Till  then  she  had  not  been  devout ;  but  his 
subtle,  courtly  religion  kindled  her  faith,  and  one  of  the 
first  spiritual  exercises  he  prescribed  for  her  was  '  to  make 
herself  a  bore  to  others.'  One  cannot  but  admire  the 
fortitude  with  which  she,  the  centre  of  her  circle,  sat  silent 
in  the  midst  of  coruscating  gossip,  social  and  intellectual, 
till  her  silence  told,  and  the  talk  slackened  :  she  saw  her 
friends  yawning  round  her  and  knew  that  it  was  owing  to 
her  dulness. 

It  was  about  this  time,  before  the  long-demanded  pension 
had  been  granted,  that  poverty  had  forced  her  to  accept 
the  invitation  of  her  friend,  the  Queen  of  Portugal,  formerly 
Princesse  de  Nemours,  to  accompany  her  to  the  Portuguese 
Court.  She  was  anxious  before  her  departure  to  gratify  one 
wish,  to  see  the  new  Court  beauty,  Madame  de  Montespan, 
who  was  talked  of  as  a  wonder  of  the  world.  Made- 
moiselle d'Heudicourt  offered  to  present  her,  and  the  intro- 
duction was  achieved.  Madame  de  Montespan,  much 
charmed  by  her  homage,  deplored  her  desertion  of  France  ; 
Madame  Scarron  told  her  the  reason  and  how  her  pension 
had  been  delayed.  '  I  will  speak  to  the  King  myself,' 
exclaimed  Madame  de  Montespan,  and  she  was  as  good  as 
her  word.  The  King  was  testy.  '  Encore  la  Veuve  Scarron,' 
he  said  ;  and  when  Ave  think  of  the  indefinite  extension  of 
that  '  Encore,'  it  seems  as  if  the  irony  of  life  had  spoken  for 
him.  For  Madame  de  Montespan  also  the  pension  was 
ensured — Madame  Scarron  stayed  in  France  at  her  inter- 
vention— her  own  hand  had  forged  the  sword  that  was  to 
kill  her.  It  was  she  too  who,  when  the  time  came,  thought 
of  the  widow  as  a  desirable  governess  for  her  children.     Her 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  123 

first  child  was  born  in  1G69,  and  a  governess  became  neces- 
sary. When  the  post  was  offered  to  Madame  Scarron, 
then  thirty-five  years  old,  she  cautiously  said  that  she 
would  only  become  the  governess  of  the  King's  children, 
and  refused  to  accept  it  till  Louis  xiv.  himself  begged  her 
to.  It  was  no  sinecure,  and  the  secrecy  alone  was  worth 
a  large  salary.  At  the  birth  of  each  of  the  four  elder  children 
the  doctor  was  blindfolded  and  did  not  even  know  of  the 
King's  presence,  though  on  one  occasion  his  Majesty  gave 
him  a  glass  of  wine.  Madame  Scarron,  closely  masked, 
received  the  child  and  bore  it  away  wrapped  in  a  shawl  to 
Paris.  Her  house  was  in  the  Rue  Vaugirard  ;  and,  in  order 
to  keep  her  oath  of  secrecy,  she  was  obliged  to  go  on  with 
all  the  rush  of  her  daily  life,  as  nobody  was  to  know  of  the 
existence  of  the  children,  and  any  change  in  her  habits 
might  have  roused  suspicion.  No  workmen  were  admitted 
to  repair  the  house  ;  she  had  to  supply  any  need  of  them 
herself,  plumbing,  papering,  and  painting  with  her  own 
hands.  She  was  even  bled,  because  she  had  a  habit  of 
blushing  and  feared  it  might  lead  her  to  betray  her  charge. 
As  the  Montespan  family  increased,  the  governess  placed 
them  out  in  different  parts  of  the  town,  and,  muffled  in 
veils,  sallied  forth  every  night  to  visit  and  superintend  each 
one  of  them.  No  detail  of  their  diet,  their  clothing,  the 
awakening  of  the  infant  intelligence,  was  neglected  ;  the 
nurses  under  her  must  have  worked  hard  for  their  living. 
At  first  she  saw  little  of  the  King,  who  thought  her  a 
prude  and  a  bluestocking,  and  did  not  like  her.  But  later 
when  the  firstborn  (who  died)  had  been  succeeded  by  the 
little  Due  de  Maine,  the  Due  de  Vexin,  and  Mademoiselle  de 
Nantes,  the  children  were  legitimised  :  the  secrecy  was 
over,  and  she  brought  the  Due  de  Maine  to  Court. 

The  little  boy  adored  her  and  hardly  knew  his  mother. 
It  was  not  long  before  Madame  Scarron  found  out  that 
Madame  de  Montespan  was  jealous,  had  a  temper,  and  loved 


124  NEW  AND  OLD 

'  scenes.'  She  made  them  on  every  occasion  with  her  gover- 
ness, whom  she  envied,  dreaded,  and  found  indispensable. 
'  For  God's  sake,  do  not  make  any  of  your  great  eyes  at  me  !  ' 
she  once  exclaimed  to  Madame  Scarron,  who,  no  doubt, 
was  as  provoking  as  calm  people  know  how  to  be.  The 
quarrels  were  reported  to  the  King  by  his  mistress,  and 
Madame  Scarron  complains  of  being  constantly  misrepre- 
sented. From  rather  disliking  her  as  '  Your  Bel  Esprit ' 
(his  manner  of  alluding  to  her),  Louis  xiv.  came  to  regard 
her  as  a  queer- tempered  person  who  had  to  be  humoured. 
The  first  thing  that  made  him  change  his  mind  was  a  day 
he  spent  alone  with  her  pupil,  the  Due  de  Maine,  whose 
wit  and  reason  reflected  credit  on  his  teacher.  It  was 
about  this  time  that  Madame  de  Montespan  employed 
Madame  Scarron  to  write  for  her  one  of  her  daily  notes  to 
the  King.  He  at  once  perceived  the  difference,  and  from 
that  moment  sought  occasions  for  corresponding  with  the 
governess  of  his  children.  Not  long  after,  he  entered 
Madame  de  Montespan's  apartments  in  the  middle  of  a 
dispute  between  the  two  ladies.  He  asked  the  cause. 
Madame  de  Montespan  was  sobbing  too  violently  to  inform 
him.  Madame  Scarron,  as  composed  as  a  statue,  begged 
him  to  step  into  the  next  room,  where  she  gave  him  her 
version  and  said  she  must  resign  her  situation.  It  may 
have  been  at  this  interview  that  the  King  defended  his 
mistress  by  dwelling  on  her  sensibility,  which  was  so  great 
that  she  wept  at  tales  of  generous  deeds.  But  in  the  end 
Madame  Scarron  impressed  him  with  her  sincerity.  He 
implored  her  to  stay,  and  she  consented. 

For  some  time  her  tyrant  had  been  moving  the  King  to 
give  his  governess  a  pension,  that  she  might  buy  an  estate 
and  retire  from  Court ;  and  now  he  acceded  to  the  request. 
He  gave  Madame  Scarron  a  sum  large  enough  to  enable 
her  to  buy  the  estate  of  Maintenon  (the  name  which,  after 
the  purchase,  she  adopted  as  her  own) ;    but  she  remained 


A   FRENCH  GOVERNESS  125 

at  her  post,  and  the  King  very  sensibly  avoided  further 
complications  by  sending  her  off  to  the  Baths  of  Bareges 
with  the  crippled  Due  dc  Maine.  This  was  the  beginning 
of  an  era.  On  the  journey,  she  wrote  that  she  was  receiving 
letters  '  from  one  man  alone.'  Her  triumph  was  complete 
when  on  her  return  the  little  boy,  who  had  never  been  able 
to  walk,  limped  into  his  father's  room  holding  her  by  the  hand. 
From  that  time  she  had  ascendency  over  the  King. 
We  cannot  forbear  from  sympathising  with  Madame 
de  Montespan,  who  must  have  found  Louis'  new-born 
taste  for  the  domestic  virtues  very  annoying.  There  was 
one  famous  occasion  when,  flashing  with  jewels,  she  rushed 
for  a  moment  into  the  royal  nursery  to  say  good-night  to 
her  sick  children,  and  found  him  there  in  sentimental  con- 
templation of  Madame  de  Maintenon,  who,  pale  and  dis- 
ordered from  long  watching,  was  rocking  the  Due  de  Maine 
on  one  arm,  while  with  the  other  hand  she  soothed  the 
wailing  Mademoiselle  de  Nantes. 

In  order  to  measure  the  new  influence  on  the  Great 
Monarch,  we  must  try  to  realise  his  charm.  The  nature  of 
his  morals  has  perhaps  blinded  the  world  to  his  sense  and 
intellect.  He  seems  to  have  had  a  real  power  in  conversa- 
tion— the  power  of  hitting  the  nail  on  the  head,  of  using 
few  words,  all  of  them  apt,  of  delicate  discrimination  and  a 
brilliant  sobriety  which  never  sought  for  effect ;  and  these 
qualities,  which  became  more  conspicuous  as  he  grew  older, 
found  a  ready  response  in  Madame  de  Maintenon.  But  past 
fascinations  must  always  remain  a  mystery,  and  in  her  case 
can  only  be  partly  accounted  for.  The  secret  of  her  bound- 
less sway  over  him  lay  somewhat  in  this  need  of  his  for 
mental  companionship  (a  middle-aged  mode  of  flirtation, 
not  unknown  to  others  beside  kings) ;  still  more,  perhaps, 
in  the  fact  that  she  was  a  woman  of  common  sense  at  a 
moment  when  common  sense  was  hard  to  find — scarcely 
discoverable  in  the  corrupt  Court.     '  A  King's  title,'  he 


126  NEW  AND  OLD 

used  to  say,  '  is  "  Sa  Majeste,"  a  Pope's  "  Sa  Saintete  "  ; 
Madame  de  Maintenon's  is  "  Sa  Solidite,"  '  and  this  was 
always  his  name  for  her. 

Her  attitude  towards  her  patroness  is  more  difficult  to 
write  about.  As  early  as  1674,  urged  forward  by  Gobelin 
and  Bossuet,  she  had  resolved  on  the  ousting  of  Madame  de 
Montespan,  or,  as  she  put  it,  the  conversion  of  the  King. 
In  the  latter  purpose  she  was  quite  sincere  and  devoutly 
concentrated — single  in  aim,  if  not  in  dealing.  She  could 
afford  to  be  mean  in  the  interests  of  religion,  for  she  was 
convinced  she  was  the  instrument  of  God — by  means  of 
the  Archbishops.  In  her  own  eyes  she  was  not  untrue  to 
a  friend  :  she  was  sapping  an  unlawful  tie  likely  to  damn 
her  Sovereign  here  and  hereafter,  and  was  bringing  him 
back  to  the  wronged  and  deserted  Queen.  Her  fervent 
desire  to  leave  the  Court,  which  she  daily  expressed  to 
her  Director  during  her  first  years  there,  waned  after  the 
Montespan's  disgrace,  and  vanished  altogether  with  the 
Queen's  death. 

In  all  this  there  was  an  overweening  love  of  power  and 
of  affairs — especially  Church  affairs— and  a  grand  passion 
for  the  King's  salvation,  the  King's  position,  the  King's 
training  :  for  everything,  it  would  seem,  but  the  King's  self. 
Or,  if  she  loved  him  (and  the  same  may  be  said  of  her  rival 
feeling  for  the  Church),  it  was  with  the  almost  extravagant 
adulation  of  a  governess  for  her  pupil  after  he  has  grown 
up,  when  she  still  regards  him  as  her  handiwork. 

The  plot  of  Bossuet  and  the  priests  against  Madame  de 
Montespan  first  took  effect  in  1675,  when  one  of  them  refused 
to  give  her  Communion  at  the  Easter  Festival.  Louis  broke 
with  her,  for  a  time  only ;  and  the  next  five  years  were  made 
up  of  such  breaks  and  returns.  It  was  during  one  of  these 
that  the  poor  creature,  devoured  by  fright  and  supersti- 
tion, went  with  Madame  de  Maintenon  to  a  fortune-teller 
in  Paris,  who  prophesied  her  fall,  but,  turning  to  her  com- 


A   FRENCH  GOVERNESS  127 

panion,  declared  that  she  would  mount  high — a  saying 
which  did  not  improve  Madame  de  Maintenon's  relations 
with  her  mistress.  But  the  more  Madame  de  Montespan 
hated  her,  the  less  could  she  do  without  her.  Presents  were 
showered  on  her  daily,  and  they  remained  together  *  arm- 
in-arm,  but  not  loving  each  other  the  better  for  that'  (as 
Madame  de  Maintcnon  wrote  on  one  occasion),  till  the  King's 
final  separation  from  his  mistress  in  1680 — when  Madame 
de  Maintenon's  lips  conveyed  the  fatal  verdict.  And  this 
was  only  brought  about  (after  interludes  of  several  minor 
loves)  by  the  appearance  of  a  new  star,  Mademoiselle  de 
Fontanges,  '  sotte  commc  un  panier  ct  belle  comme  un 
ange.'  Not  too  *  sotte  '  to  administer  a  snub  to  Madame 
de  Maintenon,  who  tried  to  wean  her  from  her  sins.  '  You 
talk  of  putting  off  a  passion,  Madame,  as  if  it  were  a  coat,' 
she  observed — and  went  on  as  before.  '  The  King,'  said 
the  enraged  Montespan  to  Madame  de  Maintenon,  '  keeps 
three  mistresses  :  me  nominally  ;  that  creature  actually  ; 
and  you  from  inclination.'  Madame  de  Maintenon,  mean- 
while, went  about  from  one  mistress  to  the  other,  exhorting 
and  persuading  them.  After  a  year  Mademoiselle  retired 
to  a  convent,  and  then  at  last  Sa  Solidite  triumphed.  She 
restored  the  King  to  the  devoted  Queen,  who  lavished 
gratitude  upon  her ;  and  the  Dauphin's  marriage,  soon 
after,  enabled  Royalty  to  appoint  her  as  the  Dauphine's 
'  Dame  de  l'atour,'  a  post  of  importance.  The  little  Due 
de  Maine  was  now  ten  years  old  and  consigned  to  the 
care  of  a  tutor;  but  the  governess,  unable  to  resign  her 
sceptre — she  never  wielded  a  rod— turned  her  attention 
to  training  the  tutor,  who  must  have  been  blessed  with 
a  patient  temper,  and  to  forming  the  young  Duke's  style 
by  correspondence. 

She  was  much  taken  up  with  her  countless  philanthropies 
— the  founding  of  industries  on  her  Maintenon  estate,  the 
supervision  of  workpeople — more  especially  with  her  poor 


128  NEW  AND  OLD 

girls'  orphanage  at  Neuilly,  which  was  now  under  the 
courtly  care  of  her  great  friend,  Madame  de  Brinon.  But 
ever  foremost  she  was  working  at  the  King's  further  salva- 
tion— at  obtaining  for  him  the  highest  place  in  the  New 
Jerusalem. 

He  now  no  longer  pretended  he  could  do  without  her, 
and  never  parted  from  her.  She  was  mistress  of  the  most 
delicate  art  of  flattery  :  she  told  him  his  faults — another 
reason  of  her  charm  for  him.  She  even  once  reproved  him 
for  reproving  his  musketeers  on  the  score  of  their  morals — 
and  he  submitted  to  her  censure.  '  What  it  would  be  to 
be  loved  by  one  who  can  love  so  well !  '  his  Majesty  ex- 
claimed to  her  one  day  with  all  the  sentiment  of  a  cold 
man  ;  and  his  platonics  were  highly  favoured  by  the  pious 
little  Queen,  who  believed  in  Madame  as  in  a  divine  insti- 
tution. The  latter  accompanied  her  Sovereign  and  the 
Court  to  Luxembourg,  the  central  point  of  the  war  in  the 
Netherlands  ;  after  which,  in  the  autumn  of  '83,  they  all 
repaired  to  Fontainebleau.  It  was  here  that  the  Queen 
fell  ill,  and  died  after  three  days'  illness,  causing  her  husband, 
he  said,  the  first  vexation  in  twenty- three  years  of  married 
life.  It  may  be  added  that  he  made  this  victory  of  tact 
easy  for  her  by  his  absence  ;  but  this  was  now  forgotten, 
and  for  a  day  or  two  he  was  dissolved  in  grief.  Well  in 
sight  of  Canaan,  Madame  de  Maintenon,  for  the  first  time 
in  her  Court  life,  lost  her  self-control :  she  was  agitated, 
unstrung,  and  refused  to  approach  the  King  till  the  Due  dc 
la  Rochefoucauld  pushed  her  by  the  arm  into  the  Royal 
presence  with  the  words,  '  This  is  not  the  time  to  leave 
him,  Madame  :  in  nis  present  condition  he  really  wants 
you.'  (This  Duke  was  not  the  author  of  the  Maximes, 
or  one  might  wonder  whether  he  spoke  the  words  as  man 
or  as  cynic.  There  are  many  of  the  Maximes  which 
might  have  been  the  result  of  a  conscientious  study  of 
Madame   de   Maintenon.)      She  did    not   meet    the   King 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  129 

again  for  some  days,  but  remained  at  Fontainebleau  in  a 
highly  emotional  condition,  amazing  to  all  who  knew  her. 
She  walked  out  daily  in  the  forest,  unattended  save  by  a 
friend,  and  frequently  burst  into  tears — both  of  which 
proceedings  were  quite  unheard  of.  When  she  again 
saw  the  royal  widower,  less  than  a  week  after  the  Queen's 
death,  he  only  rallied  her  on  her  sad  looks — his  had  dis- 
appeared. 

It  is  supposed  that  soon  after  this  they  were  betrothed. 
She  was  far  too  clever  a  tactician  to  yield  at  once,  and  often 
sent  him  away  in  suspense.  '  He  easily  desponds,  but  is 
not  repelled,'  she  wrote  of  him  in  one  of  her  letters  ;  and 
the  result  justified  her  policy.  They  were  married  in  1684  : 
probably  in  June.  About  this  date  a  mysterious  Mass  was 
celebrated  secretly  in  the  King's  apartment  at  midnight, 
Madame  de  Maintenon  being  the  only  woman  present.  Pere 
la  Chaise,  the  King's  confessor,  was  there ;  and  Harlay, 
Archbishop  of  Paris,  to  bless  the  union  ;  together  with 
Minister  Louvois  and  the  Marquis  de  Montchevreuil,  as 
witnesses,  and  the  royal  valet  Bontemps,  to  prepare  the 
altar.  There  has  never  been  a  statement  in  black  and  white 
about  her  marriage  ;  but  she  alluded  to  it  in  her  talks  with 
the  Superior  of  St.  Cyr  and  with  the  Abbe  Choisy  ;  in  her 
letters  to  her  only  brother  she  more  than  once  almost  con- 
fesses it.  The  first  instance  is  characteristic  :  she  begs 
him  not  to  come  to  Paris,  as  it  will  look  so  strange  for  them 
not  to  meet — and  that  they  cannot  do,  because  of  the 
station  in  which  God  has  placed  her  without  her  seeking. 
'  I  shall  never  get  higher  ;  I  am  too  high  already,'  she  adds. 
Even  on  her  heights  she  was  not  contented.  '  Ce  serait 
done  Monsieur  le  Pere  que  vous  voulez  ?  '  was  her  brother's 
retort  to  her  complaints  on  one  occasion.  But  he  was 
wrong  :  she  wanted  more — a  whole  hierarchy  of  angels  to 
acknowledge  her  position.  She  obtained  partial  recognition 
— the  royal  children  always  spoke  of  her  and  the  King  as 


130  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  '  Chefs  de  famille  '  ;  Louis  openly  called  her  '  Madame  ' ; 
and  a  few  people,  her  confessor  for  one,  addressed  her  in 
private  as  '  Votre  Majeste.' 

She  had  no  bed  of  roses.  Though  she  did  all  the  work  of 
a  queen  and  more,  she  had  little  of  a  queen's  glory  and  no 
one  was  afraid  to  importune  her.  The  description  of  her 
days  is  almost  terrifying.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  it 
with  those  she  had  planned  for  herself  a  few  years  earlier, 
when  she  thought  of  retiring  from  the  Court  to  Maintenon. 
Then  she  was  to  rise  at  eight  in  winter,  at  seven  in  summer, 
and  pray  for  an  hour  before  summoning  her  women  to  dress 
her.  After  this  she  was  to  give  the  needful  interviews  to 
workmen  and  mercers,  and  go  to  church  till  dinner-time. 
Two  afternoons  a  week  were  to  be  devoted  to  visits  of  duty 
or  pleasure,  till  10  p.m.  ;  two  to  receiving  visitors  until 
the  same  hour,  when  prayers  were  read  with  the  servants  ; 
bed  followed  at  eleven.  Of  the  remaining  three  days,  one 
was  to  be  taken  up  with  going  to  see  the  poor  of  the  parish, 
another  with  the  local  Hotel-Dieu,  the  third  with  the  prisons  ; 
and  the  evenings  were  to  be  spent  alone,  working  or  read- 
ing. On  the  eve  of  feast-days  or  of  taking  Communion 
she  was  to  see  no  one—certain  private  devotions  were  never 
to  be  omitted — she  was  to  wear  neither  gold  nor  silver, 
and  the  tenth  of  her  income  was  to  be  dedicated  to  the  poor. 
This  was  her  scheme,  and  she  defined  it  as  the  rudiments 
of  a  pious  life. 

Very  different  is  the  day  she  describes  in  1705  to  Madame 
Glapion,  her  confidante  at  St.  Cyr.  She  rises  at  cock-crow 
for  Mass  and  private  devotions,  for  people  begin  to  crowd 
her  room  at  half-past  seven  :  first,  the  King's  physicians, 
followed  by  the  royal  valet ;  then  the  ministers,  the  Arch- 
bishop, the  young  dukes  and  princes,  each  remaining  till 
some  one  superior  in  rank  arrives.  Everybody  leaves  when 
the  King  appears,  and  he  remains  till  he  goes  to  Mass.  All 
this  time  she  is  not  yet  dressed :  '  If  I  were,'  she  says,  '  I 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  181 

should  not  have  had  time  for  my  prayers.  I  am  still,  there- 
fore, in  my  nightcap ;  but  my  room,  notwithstanding,  is  just 
like  a  church.'  After  Mass  the  King  returns  ;  then  comes 
the  Duchess  of  Burgundy  with  a  company  of  ladies,  who 
stay  while  Madame  dines.  Her  digestion  is  impaired  by 
the  conduct  of  the  indiscreet  duchess  who  treads  on  every- 
body's toes,  or  else  by  her  confidences  about  her  domestic 
unhappiness.  The  general  '  strife  of  minds  .  .  .  unlike 
anything  else  '  disturbs  her,  and  she  is  so  hemmed  in  by 
ladies  that  she  can  get  nothing  to  drink.  At  last  the  world 
goes  off  to  dinner,  and  she  is  left  with  her  two  invalid  friends, 
Madame  d'Heudicourt  and  Madame  de  Dangcau.  This 
might  be  a  free  time  for  amusement,  4  for  chat  or  for  a 
game  of  backgammon';  but  the  Dauphin  takes  that  hour 
for  his  own,  and  '  is  the  most  difficult  man  in  the  world 
to  entertain,  for  he  never  says  a  word.'  After  dinner,  '  the 
King  and  the  whole  royal  family  come  into  my  room  and 
make  it  frightfully  hot.'  The  King  departs  after  half  an 
hour's  talk  ;  but  the  rest  remain  to  tell  the  last  scandal, 
ignorant  that  their  hostess  is  full  of  far  graver  subjects, 
State  affairs  and  the  like,  which  often  depress  her.  When 
they  quit  her  there  arrives  a  file  of  ladies,  one  by  one, 
friends  and  foes,  to  confide  their  troubles  and  beg  for  her 
influence  with  the  King.  And  when  he  comes  back  from 
hunting,  he  goes  straight  to  her — '  the  door  is  shut  and  no 
one  comes  in  again.'  They  are  alone  together,  and  she 
must  amuse  him.  '  Sometimes  he  is  subject  to  fits  of  un- 
controlled weeping ;  at  others  he  is  unwell.  There  is  no 
conversation.'  Presently  ministers  and  courtiers  arrive, 
often  with  bad  news  that  prevent  her  sleeping  at  night.  If 
the  King  does  not  need  her,  she  goes  a  little  apart  and  uses 
this  time  for  prayer.  Afterwards  she  sups  off  fruit  and  meat, 
which,  for  fear  she  should  be  wanted,  she  eats  hurriedly, 
though  hurrying  always  makes  her  ill.  By  this  time  it  is 
late : 


132  NEW  AND  OLD 

I  have  [she  says]  been  up  ever  since  six  in  the  morning,  and 
have  not  had  time  to  breathe  all  day.  I  am  worn  out,  I  have 
fits  of  yawning;  and,  more  than  all  the  rest,  I  begin  to  feel  the 
effects  of  age. 

Louis  bids  her  go  to  bed — she  complies.  Her  women  come 
to  undress  her  ;  but  either  the  King  wants  to  speak  to  her, 
or  a  minister  is  waiting  and  Louis  is  afraid  her  women  may 
hear. 

This  puts  him  out  and  me  too.  ...  At  last  I  am  in  my  bed 
and  my  women  are  sent  away.  Then  the  King  draws  near, 
and  sits  down  at  the  head  of  the  bed.  .  .  .  There  is  no  one 
there  whom  I  can  ask  to  give  me  what  I  need.  Sometimes  I 
want  some  clothes  to  be  aired ;  but  there  is  no  woman  present. 
.  .  .  Sometimes.,  when  I  have  had  a  very  severe  cold,  I  have 
been  nearly  suffocated  by  keeping  in  my  cough.  .  .  .  The 
King  stays  till  he  goes  to  supper,  and  about  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  before  that  the  Dauphin  and  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of 
Burgundy  come  in.  At  ten,  or  a  quarter  past  ten  o'clock, 
everybody  goes  away.  I  am  at  last  by  myself  and  I  can  refresh 
myself  according  to  my  needs  ;  but  the  anxieties  and  fatigue  of 
the  day  often  hinder  me  from  sleeping. 

She  certainly  had  ground  for  her  stately  grumblings  (she 
prided  herself  on  never  complaining),  and  the  King  never 
yielded  an  inch  to  her  tastes.  He  kept  her  talking  for 
hours  in  draughts,  till  she  thought  of  inventing  a  hood  to 
her  chair ;  and  he  insisted  on  having  her  windows  wide 
open  while  she  lay  shivering  with  fever.  On  one  occasion 
she  wrote  that  '  she  was  perishing  of  Symmetry,'  for  the 
sake  of  which  her  Fontainebleau  windows — '  as  big  as 
arcades  ' — were  not  allowed  either  curtains  or  shutters. 
These  were  no  trifles  to  a  woman  who  was  growing  old, 
and  they  went  on  till  she  was  eighty.  Nor  was  she  exacting 
in  her  demands ;  on  the  contrary,  she  was  always  austere. 
Some  time  already  before  the  King's  death  she  had  reduced 
herself  to  one  meal  a  day,  consisting  of  a  single  dish  sup- 


A   FRENCH  GOVERNESS  188 

plemented  by  a  cup  of  chocolate,  which  she  took  later  and 
subsequently  gave  up.  During  her  widowhood  at  St.  Cyr, 
although  she  had  passed  her  fourscore  years,  she  ate  her 
meals  at  the  common  table  with  the  nuns. 

One  wonders  how  Car  the  King  really  cared  for  h<  r  after 
marriage.  '  He  loves  me,'  she  once  said  to  a  friend,  '  but 
only  so  far  as  he  is  capable  of  loving.'  Her  scoldings  were 
taken  as  well  as  ever.  On  one  occasion  she  told  him  he 
had  done  very  wrong,  and  he  acquiesced  ;  later  he  repent- 
antly referred  to  his  fault.  '  All  that  is  past,  Sire,'  slic 
replied  ;  but  he  insisted  on  humbling  himself.  As  years 
went  on,  his  dependence  on  her  increased.  '  What  docs 
Reason  say  ?  '  he  was  wont  to  ask,  and  did  not  at  all  like 
transacting  business  without  her.  She  was  present  at  one 
at  least  of  the  State  Councils,  sitting  apart  at  her  spinning 
wheel — an  emblem  of  feminine  modesty  and  machination- — 
in  her  dress  of  feuille  morte  colour,  permanently  adopted 
because  it  brought  out  the  lustre  of  her  eyes. 

The  affairs  of  the  Church  doubled  her  labours.  Her 
mission  for  converting  others  besides  the  King  developed 
even  before  the  Queen's  death,  when,  not  content  with 
proselytising  at  home,  she  directed  her  attention  to  the 
distant  Duchesses  of  Portsmouth  and  of  York.  She  besieged 
all  her  Huguenot  relations  with  letters,  and  refused  to  apolo- 
gise to  her  cousin — one  of  the  Villettes — for  carrying  off 
and  converting,  without  his  knowledge,  his  little  girl  of 
nine,  whom  she  kept  and  educated.  However,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  the  old  story  that  she  urged  the  King  to  persecute 
the  Protestants  and  revoke  the  Edict  of  Nantes  (which  he 
did  in  '85)  seems  only  to  be  founded  on  a  letter  long  sup- 
posed to  be  hers,  but  really  forged  by  La  Beaumelle,  who 
invented  many  others  for  her  also.  In  reality,  we  find 
more  than  one  passage  in  her  letters  about  this  time,  per- 
suading Louis  to  be  less  severe  in  his  conduct  towards  the 
Huguenots.     Had   it    been    otherwise   it   would    not   have 


134  NEW  AND  OLD 

tallied  with  the  rest  of  her  character :  she  had  too  much 
good  taste  to  like  persecution.  She  became,  however,  more 
and  more  the  centre  of  orthodoxy  ('  L'Abbesse  universelle  ' 
and  '  La  femme  d'affaires  des  eveques,'  St.  Simon  calls  her) ; 
but  nothing  of  her  work  remained,  and,  woman-like,  she 
dealt  more  in  ecclesiastical  intrigues  than  in  enduring  affairs. 
Later,  between  1695  and  1699,  when  first  the  Quietist  and 
then  the  Jansenist  heresies  appeared  and  she  was  bent 
upon  crushing  them,  she  was  more  occupied  with  the 
making  and  unmaking  of  archbishops  than  with  the  ideas 
she  was  suppressing.  She  was  guilty  of  the  fanatic's 
mistake  of  believing  that  thought  can  be  stamped  out  by 
persons  carefully  chosen  to  effect  such  a  purpose.  Her 
conception  of  her  importance  in  the  Church  was  stronger 
even  than  her  common  sense,  and  led  her  (to  resume  the 
words  of  the  spiteful  St.  Simon)  into  '  a  sea  of  frivolous, 
delusive,  wearisome,  sham  occupations,  an  infinity  of 
letters  and  answers,  the  direction  of  select  souls  and  all 
sorts  of  childishness.' 

Such  a  line  of  conduct  was  bound  to  be  very  effectual  at 
the  moment,  and  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  her  the  darling 
of  Rome.  Innocent  xi.  sent  her  a  martyr's  body  from  the 
catacombs  as  a  delicate  attention  ;  and  Alexander  viii. 
consulted  her  about  the  King's  business  and  addressed  her 
as  '  our  very  dear  daughter  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  noble  woman, 
Lady  of  Maintenon.' 

She  was  one  of  those  women  who  sigh  over  having  too 
much  to  do,  and  all  the  time  invent  fresh  tasks  for  themselves. 
Her  real  talent,  as  she  always  said,  was  for  education,  a 
gift  which  might  have  found  scope  enough  in  the  training 
of  the  young  and  giddy  Duchess  of  Burgundy  (wife  of  the 
Dauphin's  son),  whom  the  King  had  entrusted  to  her  care. 
But  the  work  she  cared  most  about  was  her  orphanage  at 
Noisy,  a  home  for  both  rich  and  poor,  which  soon  after 
developed  into  the  royally-endowed  Convent  School  of  St. 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  LS5 

Cyr.  Nothing  so  fully  embodies  her  spirit  as  this  inslilu- 
tion  for  educating  the  daughters  of  poor  noblemen  and 
housing  aristocratic  nuns.  Its  courtly,  rather  interested, 
piety,  its  cold,  high-bred  good  sense,  its  capable  organi- 
sation and  impeccable  success  were  all  characteristic. 
Louis  xiv.  provided  the  young  ladies  with  pensions  when 
they  left,  and  visited  them  more  than  once — calling  them 
■  his  Daughters  of  Zion,'  and  always  impressing  on  them 
the  need  of  his  favourite  virtue,  Regularity.  It  was  to 
amuse  his  jaded  mind  that  his  wife  invented  the  famous 
dramatic  performances  of  her  pupils.  At  first  they  played 
Andromaque,  but  the  heroine  acted  with  too  much  passion, 
and  the  powerful  foundress  applied  to  Racine  to  write  for 
her  a  Riblical  play.  Esther  was  the  result,  in  the  presence 
of  the  King  ;  and  Racine,  who  had  retired  to  the  chapel  to 
pray  for  a  blessing  on  his  drama,  was  summoned  thence 
to  receive  His  Majesty's  compliments.  There  was  a  second 
representation  before  James  n.,  Mary  of  Modena,  and 
Madame  de  Sevigne  ;  and  by  and  by  Aihalie  followed.  But 
by  this  time  Madame  de  Maintenon  had  discovered  that 
the  girls'  heads  were  turned — that  they  had  too  great  a  zeal 
for  intellectual  things — that  the  whole  system  of  their 
education  must  be  changed.  After  tbis  poetry  and  accom- 
plishments were  discarded,  and  they  chiefly  learned  house- 
wifely arts  and  common  sense.  She  instructed  them  herself 
admirably  in  temporal  and  spiritual  deportment,  and  her 
discourses  are  models  of  elegant  sanity.  Simplicity  alone 
suited  her  fastidious  senses ;  and  so  she  preached  it,  and 
believed  her  sermons  to  be  purely  religious.  The  young 
ladies  were  to  dress  in  homespun  and  live  on  their  estates 
and  hate  Paris  and  submit  to  their  husbands,  whether  these 
were  good  or  bad,  sots  or  rakes.  Above  all,  they  were 
never  to  be  women  of  influence,  the  most  miserable  fate 
on  earth  !  Sometimes  she  disguised  her  sermons  in  little 
plays  and  dialogues,  taking  herself  as  the  central  figure  and 


136  NEW  AND  OLD 

recommending    her    virtues,    even    her    faults,    for    their 
imitation. 

She  was  distracted  from  St.  Cyr  by  the  death  from  small- 
pox of  the  Dauphin,  in  1711  ;  still  more  by  a  greater  calamity 
in  the  following  year,  when  his  son,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy, 
the  little  Duchess  (whom  she  loved  as  much  as  she  could 
love),  and  their  child,  all  died  in  a  few  days  of  measles. 
The  King  did  not  survive  them  long.  In  1715  he  passed 
away  with  a  calm  and  august  courage,  begging  pardon  for 
his  faults,  saying  farewell  to  all,  even  his  servants,  and 
commending  Madame  de  Maintenon  to  the  care  of  the 
Regent  Orleans.  He  transacted  a  good  deal  of  State 
business  with  a  lucid  brain,  bidding  her  destroy  some 
papers  which  might  have  made  mischief  between  two  of 
his  Ministers,  and  laughing  at  other  documents  that  would 
be  useless  after  his  death.  '  I  do  not  regret  leaving  any- 
body but  you,'  he  said  to  her;  on  which  she  bade  him 
transfer  his  thoughts  to  his  salvation.  She  hardly  left  his 
bedside  day  or  night,  and,  though  she  was  eighty  years  old, 
she  did  not  take  off  her  clothes  for  three  days.  But  directly 
he  became  unconscious  she  consulted  her  confessor  as  to  the 
need  of  her  presence,  and  on  being  told  that  the  King  would 
not  want  her  again  she  hurried  away  in  her  coach  to  say 
Masses  for  his  soul  at  St.  Cyr.  There  was  still  something 
to  be  done,  and  doing  was  always  her  method  of  salvation. 
The  King  did  not,  however,  die  till  two  days  afterwards. 
He  had  been  conscious  enough  to  mutter  prayers  to  himself 
till  the  end.  It  is  for  thus  deserting  the  King  that  she  has 
been  the  most  severely  blamed  ;  but  her  deed  was  the  out- 
come of  her  nature — a  nature  that  was  more  practical  than 
loving — and  she  cannot  be  censured  for  an  isolated  action 
in  harmony  with  herself. 

How  far  such  a  woman  had  a  heart  it  is  difficult  to  say. 
She  only  felt  affection  where  she  influenced,  and  could  love 
nothing  but  success.     Failure  was  a  bugbear  to  her,  and 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  181 

her  practice  of  the  Christian  virtues  failed  wofully  in  ihis 
respect.  Even  her  attentions  to  the  poor,  thoughtful  and 
regular  as  they  were,  were  done  officially,  for  the  sake  of 
her  soul,  and  were  not  warmed  by  charity.     The  creatures 

she  was  most  near  loving  were  the  little  Due  de  Maine  and 
the  Duchess  of  Burgundy.  But  the  former,  with  some 
justice,  she  looked  upon  as  her  creation  ;  and  the  latter 
had  to  be  perpetually  reclaimed  from  the  gambling-table, 
to  which,  in  spite  of  her  sweet  nature,  she  was  incurably 
addicted.  To  her  adopted  niece — a  girl  of  independent 
spirit — Madame  de  Maintenon  was  very  chilly  as  long  as 
the  girl  lived  with  her ;  and  it  was  only  when  she  married 
and  made  a  social  success  that  her  aunt  recognised  her 
merits. 

In  speaking  of  those  she  was  near  loving,  we  should 
perhaps  have  made  earlier  mention  of  her  only  brother,  !• 
whom  so  many  of  her  letters  are  addressed.  She  Mas  really 
attached  to  him,  was  patient  about  his  frequent  scrapes, 
and  made  noble  sacrifices — financial  and  otherwise — for  his 
sake.  Nevertheless,  her  affection  wTas  overpowered  by  the 
fact  that  he  was  only  a  '  bourgeois  de  Paris,'  and  when  he 
married  a  bourgeoise  of  fifteen  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
heart — we  should  say  her  taste — was  almost  broken.  But 
despair  was  not  for  her.  With  her  usual  courage  and 
capability,  she  set  about  schooling  her  ill-bred  sister-in- 
law.  '  Je  suis  en  train  d'education,'  she  announced,  and 
she  found  plenty  to  correct.  Madame  d'Aubigne  must 
not  eat  jam  at  the  wrong  meals  (there  were  meals  for  jam 
and  meals  for  butter) ;  she  must  leave  off  imitating  the 
grimaces  of  Madame  de  Longueville  and  laughing  in  a 
forced  manner ;  she  must  write  oftener,  and  then  Madame 
will  '  have  the  complaisance  to  answer  her ' ;  she  must  walk 
out  with  a  '  prudish  woman  from  the  middle  classes,'  and 
not  pretend  to  a  fashionable  chaperone.  When  she  was 
good  she  should  be  rewarded  ;   when  she  was  not  she  should 


138  NEW  AND  OLD 

have  no  presents  ;  and  when  she  was  exacting  Madame  de 
Maintenon  sent  her  a  long  list  of  the  favours  she  had  already 
conferred  on  her,  among  which  were  a  '  robe  de  chambre 
de  peluche  couleur  de  feu,'  a  '  sac  de  velours  cramoisi,'  two 
caps  in  point  de  France,  and  other  garments,  amounting  in 
all  to  2661  francs.  In  spite  of  her  regrets  for  her  brother's 
position,  she  never  tried  to  make  his  wife  into  a  woman  of 
the  world,  and  had  the  good  sense  to  do  no  more  than  try 
to  equip  her  for  the  post  she  occupied. 

Nowhere  is  the  superiority  of  her  practical  qualities  over 
her  feeling  more  apparent  than  in  these  particular  letters. 
She  arranged  the  embarrassed  finances  of  the  couple  in  a 
masterly  way,  going  into  every  detail  of  their  income  and 
necessities — the  candles  that  were  needed  in  each  room 
and  the  proper  uses  of  candle-ends  and  scraps  of  chicken. 
Their  annual  expenditure,  she  reckoned,  should  come  to 
£480,  allowing  £20  a  month  for  food,  light,  and  firing  in  a 
household  of  eleven,  £40  for  rent  (which  she  called  an  over- 
statement), £40  for  Madame  d'Aubigne's  dress,  and  £120  for 
her  brother's  private  expenses.  If  she  were  allowed  to  play 
absolute  Providence,  she  acted  with  real  beneficence  ;  but 
she  turned  Providence  into  a  governess,  and  if  her  advice 
was  refused  she  was  offended. 

It  is  an  accepted  axiom  that  poets  alone  are  extravagant ; 
but  it  is  no  less  true  that  mentors  have  their  excesses,  and 
Madame  de  Maintenon's  correspondence  might  stand  as  a 
proof  of  this  assertion.  Like  many  reprovers  of  others' 
folly,  she  was  afraid  of  making  herself  absurd  : 

I  had  [she  once  observed]  a  great  fund  of  religion,  which 
hindered  me  from  doing  any  evil  .  .  .  which  made  me  hate 
anything  that  could  bring  me  into  contempt. 

She  ran  riot  in  self-preservation — mental  preservation,  be 
it  understood — and  composed  a  kind  of  spiritual  grammar 
by  which  she  regulated  her  feelings. 


A  FRENCH  GOVERNESS  139 

The  liking  that  people  had  for  me  [she  Bays]  was  an  abstract 
friendship— a  friendship  founded  on  esteem  rather  than  on  love. 
I  have  never  wanted  to  be  loved  intimately  by  any  one  :  I  wished 
to  be  loved  by  all  the  world  and  to  hear  my  name  pronounced 
with  admiring  respect  .  .  .  above  all,  to  be  approved  of  by 
people  of  standing— that  was  my  idol. 

It  was  not  a  lovable  idol.  Prudence  is  only  a  means,  and 
when  it  is  taken  as  an  end  it  revenges  itself  on  the  blunderer. 
The  reputation  that  Madame  do  Maintenon  cherished  hfes 
certainly  suffered  for  her  coldness. 

The  last  years  of  her  life  were  perhaps  the  most  amiable, 
for  in  the  retirement  of  St.  Cyr  she  reigned  supreme  and 
was  constantly  exercising  her  best  faculty — that  of  teaching. 
Until  her  death,  at  eighty-four,  the  children  and  the  novices 
came  every  afternoon  to  her  bedroom  for  instruction.  She 
rose  at  six  every  morning,  attended  two  Masses  in  the  Chapel, 
returned  there  at  four,  and  remained  till  six  in  the  evening. 
One  day  a  month  she  prepared  her  soul  for  death,  and  her 
good  works  were  countless.  '  Ah,  Madame ! '  said  one  of 
the  adulating  nuns,  '  it  is  not  everybody  who  has  a  heart 
like  you.'  '  Je  le  sais,'  was  all  that  Madame  answered. 
Another  time,  when  she  was  pressed  to  write  her  life,  she 
refused.  It  would,  she  said,  be  only  a  spiritual  record. 
'  None  but  the  Saints  could  be  interested.'  Such  was  her 
conclusion— a  fair  measure  of  the  position  she  assigned  to 
herself. 

In  1717  the  Czar  and  his  interpreter  came  to  pay  a  visit 
to  her  bedside.  He  asked  her  what  was  the  matter.  She 
answered  that  it  was  old  age  and  weakness  :  but,  as  he  did 
not  understand  and  the  interpreter  could  not  interpret, 
the  call  came  speedily  to  an  end.  This  was  practically  her 
last  State  function.  In  April,  1719,  she  fell  ill  of  fever,  and 
knew  that  she  was  dying.  Her  confessor  begged  her  to 
bless  her  household.  She  abased  herself  by  refusing ;  but 
he  insisted,  and  she  raised  her  hands  in  benediction.     It  was 


140  NEW  AND  OLD 

her  last  action,  and  soon  after  she  died  in  peace.  She  was 
buried  in  the  Church  of  St.  Cyr  with  great  pomp,  and 
followed  to  the  grave  by  Cardinals  and  Princes  of  the  Blood. 
She  might  be  the  text  of  a  hundred  sermons  ;  but  it  is 
not  for  us  to  preach  them.  One  merit  she  certainly  had, 
and  that  was  to  tell  the  truth  about  herself  as  far  as  she 
knew  it.  Whoever  will  turn  to  her  writings — her  Letters 
and  Conversations — will  find  her  whole  self  there.  They 
are  fascinating  reading,  whether  as  human  documents  or 
as  models  of  elaborate  simplicity  and  lucid  advice.  When 
we  have  put  them  down  little  remains  to  be  said,  and  that 
little  Madame  du  Deffand  has  said  for  us.  '  I  have  finished 
reading  her,'  she  wrote  a  century  after  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon's  day  ;  '  and  the  result  is  a  high  opinion  of  her  mind, 
a  low  opinion  of  her  heart,  and  no  taste  at  all  for  her  person  ; 
but  I  persist  in  maintaining  that  she  was  by  no  means 
false.'  It  is  not  the  epitaph  Sa  Solidite  would  have  chosen  ; 
but  there  are  many  to  endorse  it. 

1900. 


CHARLOTTE   YONGE  AS   A  CHRONICLER 

It  was  only  the  other  day  that  Charlotte  Yonge  was  laid  to 
rest  at  Hursley  in  Hampshire,  near  the  cross  of  John  Keble, 
her  guide  and  her  intimate  friend.  There  are  probably  few 
people  born  between  1845  and  1865  who  did  not  leave  a 
little  piece  of  their  hearts  in  her  quiet  grave.  What  eager 
girl  of  the  'seventies  did  not  mould  herself  upon  Ethel  in 
The  Daisy  Chain,  with  her  untidy  skirts  and  her  visions  of 
reforming  Cocksmoor  ?  Who  has  not  thrilled  over  the 
Doubts  of  Norman  at  Oxford  ?  And  which  of  us  that 
happened  to  have  an  ailment  in  that  period  did  not  try  to 
give  the  sweet  if  impossible  smile  of  Margaret  May  upon 
her  sofa  ?  Robert  Browning  says  that  '  if  you  die,  there  's 
the  dying  Alexander  '  ;  but  who  would  not  much  rather 
have  died  like  Guy  Morville,  the  heir  of  Redclyffe  ?  We 
may  have  been  the  greater  prigs  for  doing  so,  and  self- 
examination  can  be  a  morbid  habit.  And  yet  is  it  more 
unwholesome  than  the  self-analysis  and  the  fear  of  being 
absurd  that  possess  the  present  generation  ?  It  is,  at  all 
events,  the  outcome  of  moral  enthusiasm,  not  of  rather 
aimless  criticism  ;  and  the  annals  of  commonplace  virtue 
are  not  more  tedious  than  the  annals  of  commonplace  vice. 
Miss  Yonge  is  as  lengthy  as  you  choose,  but  what  can  be 
lengthier  than  a  modern  realistic  novel  ? 

In  limited  space  it  is  impossible  to  do  justice  to  all  her 
efforts.  Perhaps  her  historical  stories  and  studies  are  the 
most  irreproachable  of  these.  When  she  gets  to  other 
centuries  than  her  own  she  is  freer  from  the  trammels  of 

duty  and  moralising,  and  is  able  to  put  her  particular  tenets 

1  i 


142  NEW  AND  OLD 

into  fancy  dress.  But  her  domestic  chronicles  best  embody 
herself.  All  that  was  original  in  her  is  there,  and  it  is  to 
them  that  this  review  will  confine  itself. 

Charlotte  Yonge's  chief  gift  is  not  a  literary  one  :  it  is 
rather  a  moral  gift— the  faculty  of  intimacy.  This  it  was, 
perhaps,  which  endeared  her  to  more  than  one  distin- 
guished mind.  In  the  Memoir  of  Tennyson,  Mr.  Palgrave 
records  how  one  night,  in  a  Devonshire  inn,  he  shared  a 
room  with  him,  and  how  the  poet  lay  in  his  bed  with  a 
candle  persistently  reading  a  book  of  Miss  Yonge's,  which 
he  had  already  been  opening  '  at  every  disengaged  moment, 
while  rambling  over  the  moor.'  '  I  see  land  !  '  cried  Tenny- 
son at  last :  '  Mr. is  going  to  be  confirmed.'     It  is  well 

known,  too,  how  Morris  and  the  Pre-Raphaelites  read  and 
re-read  The  Heir  of  Redclyffe,  the  novel  to  which  we  find  it 
most  difficult  to  return.  There  are,  of  course,  obvious 
reasons  outside  her  characters  to  account  for  their  taste. 
Charlotte  Yonge  was  the  child  of  the  Tractarian  School, 
without  any  of  its  extravagances,  and  her  tone  of  symbolism 
was  congenial  to  the  Brotherhood  ;  so  were  the  books  that 
were  influencing  her — Sintram  and  the  Morte  d?  Arthur. 
And  however  different  was  her  treatment  of  material, 
her  range  of  subjects  was  analogous  to  theirs,  and  varied 
between  historical  romance  and  the  homeliest  themes.  But 
she  could  hardly  have  affected  them  as  she  did  had  it  not 
been  for  her  deep,  if  narrow,  moral  insight  and  her  faithful 
minuteness  of  description.  Her  work,  as  a  recent  critic1 
has  cleverly  pointed  out,  was  in  her  own  little  province 
the  result  of  Wordsworth. 

The  secret  of  Charlotte  Yonge's  strength  lies  in  this  :  she 
plucks  the  heart  out  of  the  obvious — she  evokes  the  familiar. 
No  one  can  more  potently  stir  the  associations  that  recall 
our  childhood's  excitements  :  the  emotions  of  lessons  ;  the 
dual  life  of  inner  visions  and  walks  with  the  governess  ; 

1  'Charlotte  Yonge,'  by  Ethel  Earl,  The  Pilot,  March  30,  1901, 


CHARLOTTE  YONGE  AS  A  CHRONICLE*     14S 

the  very  smell  of  a  school-treat  at  Christmas  ;  the  hissing 
of  the  tea-urn  which  brought  us  our  evening  liberty.  The 
Daisy  Chain  is  an  epic,  the  Iliad  of  the  schoolroom,  and 
should  hold  its  place  as  a  moral  classic. 

But  if  we  are  to  make  a  preposterous  analogy,  Miss  Yonge 
is,  on  the  whole,  more  like  Zola  than  Homer  in  her  methods. 
Both  she  and  the  French  novelist  take  an  enormous  canvas 
and,  with  prodigious  industry,  work  out  the  experience 
of  each  of  their  characters.  The  Rougon-Macquarts  are 
almost  as  numerous  as  the  Mays,  or  the  Pillars  of  the  House, 
and,  like  them,  recur  through  an  endless  series  of  volumes. 
Both  writers  have  the  same  courage  in  the  face  of  tedious- 
ness,  and  the  same  faults — overgrown  conscience  and  pro- 
lixity. Their  themes,  it  must  be  owned,  are  very  different. 
Miss  Yonge  is  at  her  best  when  she  describes  youth.  The 
life  of  girlhood  between  twelve  and  twenty-five  lies  open 
to  her  with  its  joys  and  struggles,  and  so  does  every  un- 
important, all-important  detail  of  daily  existence  in  a 
country  neighbourhood.  What,  for  instance,  can  be  more 
arresting — what  can  carry  us  more  directly  into  the  centre 
of  things — than  the  opening  of  The  Daisy  Chain  ? 

1  Miss  Winter,  are  you  busy  ?  Do  you  want  this  afternoon  ? 
Can  you  take  a  good  long  walk  ? ' 

'  Ethel,  my  dear,  how  often  have  I  told  you  of  your  im- 
petuosity— you  have  forgotten.' 

'  Very  well '  —  with  an  impatient  twist  —  '  I  beg  your 
pardon.  Good  morning,  Miss  Winter,'  said  a  thin,  lank, 
angular,  sallow  girl  just  fifteen. 

Here  is  the  gift  of  intimacy  :  a  something  that  puts  us 
in  touch  with  her  people  at  once.  And  she  knows  in  their 
essence  all  the  little  things  that  affect  family  life,  even  to 
the  frictions  that  exist,  without  fault  on  any  side,  between 
differing  temperaments  in  the  same  circle.  That  is  why 
we  do  not  so  much  read  her  stories  as  live  next  door  to 


144  NEW  AND  OLD 

her  characters,  embracing  all  the  worry  and  tedium  as  well 
as   the   pleasure   which  identification   with   a  family  must 
mean.     When  the  Underwoods  and  Merry  fields  have  the 
measles  we  know  exactly  which  one  is  the  worst,  and  want 
to  go  and  inquire  after  them.     When  the  Pillars  of  the 
House  give  a  party  on   about  eighteenpence    and  entertain 
the  County  on  that  modest  sum  (Miss  Yonge  has  a  discreet 
partiality  for    orthodox  lords),   we  find  ourselves  growing 
needlessly  harassed  lest  the  home-made  cakes  should  be  too 
heavy.     And  when    (in  The  Clever  Woman   of  the  Family) 
Ermine  Williams,  the  Absolute    Idea  of    the  Invalid,  puts 
on  her  '  Niirnberg  horn  brooch  '  to  welcome  the  lover  she 
had  counted  as  dead,  we  are  consumed  with  desire  to  see 
what  she  looked  like.     Or  take  Countess  Kate,  perhaps  the 
most  flawless  of  her  domestic  stories.     How  well  we  know 
the  ardent,  aggravating,  lovable,  grandiloquent  little  girl, 
with  her  private  heroics,  her  awkwardness  in  public,  her 
unsatisfied   heart ;     and   Rachel,    too,    the   infallible,    '  the 
Clever  Woman  '  of  a  small  set,  who  made  a  '  mission  '  of  her 
ladylike  cousin's  family,  to  the  destruction  of  their  com- 
fort, and  in  due  time  landed  herself  in  a  happy  marriage 
with  a  soldier  of  iron  will.     These  and  a  dozen  more  come 
back  to  our  mind  like  well-remembered  visitors.     Indeed, 
if  we  search  Miss  Yonge's  many  novels,  we  shall  find  there 
the  germs  of  most  of  the  women's  characters  that  we  come 
across  in  the  world  ;    it  is  the  circumscribed  development 
she  gives  them,  apart  from  the  accidents  of  time  and  fashion, 
that  makes  them  often  seem  remote  from  our  knowledge. 
There  is  at  least  no  lack  of  depth  in  Charlotte  Yonge.     If 
we  want  the  deeper  aspects  of  family  experience- — the  things 
all  feel  and  seldom  formulate — no  one  is  better  at  suggesting 
them.     When  scarlet  fever  seized  the  delicate  boy  of  the 
May  family,  Ethel  and  her  father  felt  grave  forebodings. 

Ethel  silently  and  rapidly  moved  about,  dreading  to  give  an 
interval  for  tremblings  of  heart.     Five  years  of  family  prosperity 


CHARLOTTE  ¥ONGE  AS  A  CHRONICLER     M> 

had  passed,  and  there  had  been  that  insensible  feeling  of  peace 
and  immunity  from  care  which  is  strange  to  look  back  upon 
when  one  hour  has  drifted  from  smooth  water  to  turbid 
currents.  There  was  a  sort  of  awe  in  seeing  the  mysterious 
gates  of  sorrow  again  unclosed. 

In  work,  in  character-drawing,  such  as  all  this,  there  is 
the  saving  grace,  the  steady  force  of  reality.  From  the 
heart  it  comes  ;  to  the  heart  it  goes.  And,  in  so  far,  it 
will  retain  its  vital  quality. 

It  is  when  Miss  Yonge  leaves  her  set  limits  that  truth 
forsakes  her.  She  is  not  an  artist ;  the  aesthetic  sense  is 
outside  her  and  generally  counts  as  a  danger  in  her  scheme 
of  existence.  Mr.  Rivers  in  The  Daisy  Chain — who  pos- 
sesses a  Claude  and  a  portfolio  of  engravings  from  Raphael, 
and  likes  '  a  show  set  of  peasants  in  rustic  cottages,'  and 
puts  '  all  that  offends  the  eye  out  of  the  way  ' — has,  accord- 
ing to  Dr.  May,  '  cultivated  his  taste  till  it  is  getting  to  be 
a  disease.'  And  Cherry  Underwood's  picture,  painted  to 
the  glory  of  heaven,  without  much  knowledge  of  drawing, 
was  at  once  accepted  by  the  Academy,  and  must  have  been 
a  pretty  bad  specimen.  None,  indeed,  of  her  artists  are 
happy  in  their  mind  when  once  outside  the  lych-gate  of 
their  church.  But,  after  all,  bad  art  for  the  glory  of  heaven 
is  no  worse  than  bad  art  for  art's  sake — the  ideal  of  modern 
stories — and  has  the  advantage  of  possessing  a  practical 
motive  which  is  applicable  to  other  forms  of  activity.  It 
must  be  owned,  though,  that  Miss  Yonge  carries  that  motive 
pretty  far.  Sports,  games  even,  do  not  escape.  Croquet 
is  frequently  a  matter  for  prayer  :  for  or  against,  according 
as  the  croquet-player  is  indolent  by  temperament  or  too 
much  absorbed  in  the  game.  Her  favourite  lady  in  The 
Clever  Woman  of  the  Family  yields  to  it  only  by  degrees, 
because  she  long  believed  it  to  be  the  monopoly  of  fast 
officers  and  their  set.  And  bicycles  (touchingly  intro- 
duced into  her  last  volume,  Modern  Broods)  are  merely 

K 


146  NEW  AND  OLD 

allowed  because  they  can  be  ridden  in  the  service  of  the 
Church.  '  Magdalen  (runs  the  story)  had,  however,  decided 
on  granting  the  bicycles.  She  had  found  plenty  of  use  for 
her  own,  for  it  was  possible,  with  prudent  use  of  it,  avoid- 
ing the  worst  parts  of  the  road,  to  be  at  early  celebration 
at  St.  Andrew's,  and  get  to  the  Sunday  School  at  Ams- 
combe  afterwards.' 

It  is  impossible  to  imagine  many  men  reading  Miss  Yonge. 
There  is  an  intemperate  tameness  about  her — at  once  her 
charm  and  her  defect — which  forbids  our  associating  man- 
kind with  her.  It  would  be  as  if  we  dreamed  of  them 
taking  high  tea  in  perpetuo.  Her  masculine  portraits  are 
generally  impossible.  She  can  manage  a  father  or  a  colonial 
bishop,  or  even  a  widower  clergyman.  Dr.  May  is  the  real 
hero  of  The  Daisy  Chain  and  The  Trial ;  and  the  Diocesan 
in  the  last  story,  or  blind  Mr.  Clare  in  The  Clever  Woman  of 
the  Family,  can  mildly  hold  his  own.  But  her  lovers,  clerical 
and  military,  and,  worse  still,  her  man  of  the  world  !  Her 
conception  of  the  latter  is  embodied  in  Philip  Morville,  who 
frequently  stays  with  a  lord  in  a  gay  country-house,  and 
says  '  Encore  !  '  when  the  visitors'  bell  rings  a  second  time 
in  the  villa  of  his  untitled  uncle  ;  or  again,  in  Dr.  May's 
utterance  when  he  found  the  sitting-room  '  pervaded  with  an 
odour  of  nutmeg  and  port-wine,'  while  '  a  kettle,  a  decanter 
and  empty  tumblers  told  tales  ' — of  nothing  worse  than 
Tom's  attempt  to  cure  his  younger  brother's  cold.  '  Cold,' 
says  the  Doctor,  '  is  always  the  excuse.  But,  another  time, 
don't  teach  your  brother  to  make  this  place  like  a  fast  man's 
rooms.' 

Miss  Yonge  prefers  the  Church  or  the  Army  as  a  calling 
for  her  favourites,  but  she  allows  other  vocations.  That 
Pillar  of  the  House  who  became  the  editor  of  a  high-toned 
newspaper,  besides  squires,  doctors,  sailors,  the  weary 
politician  and  an  emigrant  farmer  or  two,  come  across  our 
memory  as  we  write.     But  as  all  of  them  are  bent  on  devot- 


CHARLOTTE  YONGE  AS  A  CHRONICLER     H7 

ing  their  professions  to  the  cause  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
their  talk  is,  so  to  speak,  reduced  to  a  common  denominator. 
Extreme  heartiness  is  her  favourite  method  of  producing  a 
manly  note  in  conversation  ;  and  rather  outlandish  ejacula- 
tions, such  as  '  Aye: !  '  '  Ha  !  '  '  Nay  !  '  'What  say 
you  ?  '  are  frequent  in  the  mouths  of  the  men  in  her  books. 
They  are  not  much  more  successful  in  feeling  than  in  speech. 
When  Leonard  Ward  is  condemned  to  death  for  a  murder 
of  which  he  is  innocent,  he  is  resigned,  even  pleased  to  be 
hanged,  because  he  had  once,  unpunished,  thrown  a  stone 
(which  did  not  hit)  at  his  elder  brother  for  telling  him  the 
drawing-room  was  untidy.  Guy  Morville,  the  heir  of  Iled- 
clyffe,  cures  himself  of  the  Rcdclyffe  temper  by  playing 
the  '  Harmonious  Blacksmith  '  whenever  he  is  impatient — 
though  the  amount  of  time  he  must  have  wasted  in  running 
to  and  from  the  piano  is  incalculable.  Or,  if  we  want  a 
Bacchanalia  of  mildness,  let  us  look  in  upon  the  proceed- 
ings on  Philip  Morville's  wedding-day — the  crown  of  a 
long  and  faithful  though  clandestine  love. 

It  was  late  before  he  appeared  at  all,  and  when  he  came  down 
there  was  nothing  so  plainly  written  on  his  face  as  headache. 
It  was  so  severe  that  the  most  merciful  thing  Mas  to  send  him 
to  lie  on  the  sofa  in  the  drawing-room.  Amabel  said  she  would 
fetch  him  some  camphor,  and  disappeared,  while  Laura  (the 
bride)  sat  still  with  forced  composure.  Her  father  fidgeted, 
only  restrained  by  her  presence  from  expressing  his  fears  that 
Philip  was  too  unwell  for  the  marriage  to  take  place  to-day, 
and  Charles  talked  cheerfully  of  the  great  improvement  in  his 
general  health.  ...  At  the  last  moment  she  (Amabel)  went 
to  warn  Philip  it  was  time  to  go,  if  he  meant  to  walk  to  church 
alone,  the  best  thing  for  his  head. 

It  should  perhaps  be  mentioned  that  the  headache  came 
from  remorse  and  had  already  lasted  eighteen  months. 
There  should  be  a  separate  treatise  on  Miss  Yonge's  treat- 
ment of  illness,  as   the  maladies  in   her  novels,  whether 


148  NEW  AND  OLD 

proceeding  from  fire  or  fever,  whether  from  shrunken  tendons 
or  overwork,  are  alike  only  cured  by  joy,  repentance,  or 
some  other  well-regulated  feeling.  But  these,  like  Philip's 
remorse,  belong  to  the  machinery  of  her  tales.  She  is 
happily  too  sensible  a  woman  to  make  for  a  plot  as  a  rule. 
When  she  does  so  it  is  an  anomaly,  whether  in  The  Trial, 
where  for  three  years  the  escaped  villain  keeps  in  his  pocket 
the  only  document  that  can  inculpate  him  ;  or  in  The 
Clever  Woman  of  the  Family,  where  the  deceptions  prac- 
tised by  the  robber  and  forger  are  such  as  a  baby-thief 
would  not  attempt.  In  that  book,  too,  so  that  no  fault 
may  be  left  unwarned  in  her  works,  she  conscientiously 
allows  Bessie  Keith  the  mildest  of  married  flirtations  with 
Mr.  Carleton,  formerly  rejected  by  her.  But  where  it 
reaches  its  apex  (we  cannot  call  it  a  crisis)  she  has  the  mis- 
fortune to  be  upon  a  croquet-lawn.  In  her  guilty  excite- 
ment and  desire  to  reach  her  relations  she  trips  over  a  hoop, 
falls,  and  dies  a  few  hours  afterwards  from  an  internal 
injury,  the  effect  of  the  accident.  The  culprit  gives  up 
fishing  in  the  agony  of  his  regret  and  takes  to  a  serious  pro- 
fession, much  to  the  pleasure  of  his  Mama.  Her  uncle 
reads  the  burial-service,  and  all  the  other  clergymen  and 
officers,  with  their  wives  and  nieces,  live  rather  happily 
ever  afterwards. 

When  we  consider  episodes  such  as  these,  we  cannot  be 
surprised  that  the  rising  generation  for  the  most  part  refuse 
to  read  Charlotte  Yonge — except  for  her  historical  stories. 
The  smallness  of  her  experience,  or  rather  (for  that  might 
apply  to  Miss  Austen)  of  the  results  of  her  experience,  puts 
them  off  her  track.  She  is  never  perfect  outside  the  hearth, 
and  the  hearth  is  not  very  popular  just  now.  No  more  is 
the  British  Gentlewoman,  but  if  ever  a  temple  were  built 
for  her  Miss  Yonge  should  figure  as  its  goddess.  The  young 
people  brought  up  on  Stevenson  and  Rudyard  Kipling 
demand  more  colour  and  movement  than  she  can  give  them. 


CHARLOTTE  YONGE  AS  A  CHRONICLER     149 

And  yet  in  her  last  book  she  has  tried  hard  to  put  herself 
in  touch  with  them  and  has  made  pathetic  concessions. 
Pneumatic  tyres  arc  adapted  to  self-sacrifice.  The  girl 
who  longs  for  Girton  is  allowed  to  go  to  Oxford,  and  finds 
the  womanly  daughter  and  modest  niece  of  an  Anglican 
lord  as  her  fellow-students  ;  Dolores,  the  author's  favourite 
maiden,  gives  lectures  on  electricity  and  founds  a  reading- 
settlement.  But  it  is  no  good.  The  girls  of  to-day  cannot 
see  themselves  in  Miss  Yonge,  and  that  is  their  chief  demand 
from  literature  :  for  young  people  are  not  imaginative. 
Besides,  this  is  a  critical  age.  '  I  can't  read  Miss  Yonge  !  ' 
said  a  little  girl  the  other  day  :  '  she  makes  such  long  con- 
versations, and  thinks  everything  she  talks  of  is  the  same  ; 
it  doesn't  seem  to  matter  to  her  if  it 's  a  little  dog,  or  self- 
denial,  or  a  young  girl,  or  a  leaf.'  It  is  always  easier  for 
youth  to  detect  faults  than  virtues. 

And  what  have  people  in  their  teens  in  the  place  of 
Charlotte  Yonge  ?  The  natural  answer  seems  to  be  :  '  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward.'  She,  too,  writes  the  serious  family 
story,  unexceptionable  in  tone  and  dealing  with  religious 
problems.  She,  too,  depicts  the  spiritual  trials  of  clergy- 
men and  young  women.  She  paints  the  earnest  priest  who 
goes  out  of  the  Church,  Miss  Yonge  the  earnest  priest  who 
stays  in  it — each  according  to  her  generation  ;  and  Norman 
May  is  at  least  as  living  as  Robert  Elsmere.  But  when  we 
come  to  women,  it  is  the  elder  author  who  bears  off  the 
palm.  Will  Marcella  with  her  humanitarian  visions,  her 
beauty,  her  diamonds,  and  her  influence  in  society,  live  as 
long  as  dowdy,  noble  Ethel  with  her  merely  Christian 
scheme  ?  Or  has  the  fast,  brilliant,  free-thinking  heroine 
of  Helbeck  of  Bannisdale  the  vitality  of  Angela  Underwood, 
half-flirt,  half-saint,  with  her  hoyden  tricks,  her  taste  for 
Ritualism,  and  her  hidden  capacities  for  devotion  ?  In 
the  sum  of  her  work,  too,  Miss  Yonge  gains  the  prize  ;  her 
books  live  for  us  and  remain  in  our  hearts  as  Mrs.  Ward's 


150  NEW  AND  OLD 

hardly  will,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  author  of  Marcella 
treats  of  people  and  subjects  much  more  congenial  to  us 
than  those  of  The  Heir  of  Redclyffe.  For  when  we  come  to 
compare  the  ground  that  both  ladies  cover — when  we  are 
confronted  by  Mrs.  Ward's  vast  range  of  themes  temporal 
and  spiritual,  the  pen  halts  and  the  analogy  stops. 

The  reason  why  Miss  Yonge  wears  is  not  far  to  seek.  Her 
experience  is  limited,  but  it  is  deep,  it  is  first-hand.  She 
has  chosen  a  narrow  path,  but  all  that  she  describes  on 
that  path  is  described  from  her  own  observation.  She  is 
herself  :  unconscious,  spontaneous  and  human.  The  people 
she  evokes  are  no  sudden  creations  :  they  have  always  been 
in  her  affections.  Nevertheless  it  is  natural  that,  in  spite 
of  her  virtues,  she  should  be  neglected,  while  the  novels  of 
Mrs.  Ward  are  devoured  by  an  audience  whose  needs  she 
represents,  whose  dialect  she  talks. 

And  yet  it  is  a  misfortune.  Miss  Yonge  could  supply 
this  generation  with  many  of  the  qualities  it  lacks.  Un- 
selfishness and  reverence  are  virtues  none  too  common, 
and  the  wider  the  channel  they  flow  in  the  better  are  they 
worth  having.  Charlotte  Yonge  appeals  to  enduring  feel- 
ings, not  to  fleeting  emotions  ;  and,  when  all  is  said,  a 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  doing  good  is  better  than  the 
belief  that  no  good  can  be  done. 

1901. 


EMILY   LAWLESS 

Last  October  there  passed  out  from  among  us  one  of  our 
few  women-poets,  Emily  Lawless,  Irishwoman  first,  and 
nil  the  rest  afterwards.  All  the  rest  includes  a  great  deal  : 
a  writer  of  novels  and  of  romance,  an  historian,  a  naturalist, 
a  lover  of  science,  a  bold  thinker.  And  in  each  of  these 
many  parts  Emily  Lawless  won  distinction  ;  in  her  poems, 
in  her  writing  of  Irish  romances,  of  Hurrish  and  of  Grania, 
something  stronger  and  more  likely  to  endure. 

If  she  was  first  an  Irishwoman,  it  was  not  of  the  type 
usually  accepted  as  representative,  at  least  in  England 
— the  vague  and  mystical  Celt,  impetuous,  unpractical, 
guided  by  forces  outside  reason.  The  mind  of  Emily 
Lawless  was  a  concrete  mind  with  a  turn  for  affairs  ;  with 
a  man's  business  outlook,  large  and  lucid,  not  over- 
concerned  with  detail ;  still  more  with  a  gift  for  natural 
science,  her  '  ruling  passion  '  from  seven  years  old  onwards, 
and  for  the  methods  of  minute  research.  But  under  this 
fine  and  interesting  terra  firma  there  ran  deeper  than  can 
plummet  sound  the  unconscious  currents  of  race — flashing 
here  and  there  to  the  surface,  when  and  how  she  herself 
knew  not — persistent  questionings  of  the  unseen,  gleams  of 
intuition,  a  sudden  brilliant  vision  of  the  past,  a  wild  stirring 
of  the  blood,  a  passionate  companionship  with  Irish  earth 
and  sea  ;  or — more  rarely — tranquil  pools  of  inspiration 
reflecting  in  their  depths  the  things  she  brought  from  afar. 
Perhaps  there  are  few  people  in  whom  the  two  strains  of 
artist  and  of  woman  keep  so  distinctly  alongside — seldom 
fusing,    touching    occasionally,    yet    without    causing    the 

151 


152  NEW  AND  OLD 

conflict,  the  clash  of  emotions  which  has  troubled  so  many 
creators.  What  disturbance  she  suffered  from  her  gifts 
was  nearly  always  intellectual,  unless  it  were  from  the 
nervous  stress  of  work.  Her  poetry  flowed  easily  from  her, 
was  almost  her  pastime  ;  and,  until  illness  overtook  her, 
the  writing  of  her  books  gave  her  pleasure.  This  was  the 
more  remarkable  because  when  she  began  her  real  career 
as  a  writer  she  was  already  forty-one,  and  had  no  spring 
of  youth  to  help  her. 

Emily  Lawless  was  born  in  Ireland  in  1845.  Her  father 
was  the  third  Lord  Cloncurry,  her  mother  the  beautiful 
Miss  Kirwan  of  Galway.  Her  great-grandfather,  the  first 
peer,  was  the  famous  opponent  of  the  Union,  twice  imprisoned 
in  the  Tower — a  born  hero  of  romance,  but  a  good  adminis- 
trator, clear-headed  and  beneficent,  who  united  in  himself 
some  of  the  gifts  that  distinguished  his  great-granddaughter. 
He  is  good  to  read  of  amidst  his  picturesque  doings  with 
Ministers  and  patriots,  with  O'Connell  and  the  rest,  as 
chronicled  by  his  son  in  his  Life  and  Letters.  And  it  was 
from  his  day  and  through  his  conversion  that  his  family 
embraced  the  Protestant  faith. 

Emily  Lawless  spent  the  best  parts  of  her  childhood  in 
the  West  of  Ireland,  in  her  mother's  home  and  country  ; 
and  Castle  Hackett  and  County  Galway  and  the  haunted 
hill  of  Cruchmaa  and  the  islands  of  Aran  made  up  her  land 
of  enchantment,  the  country  which  every  child  creates  for 
itself,  but  which  this  child  found  ready  to  her  hand.  The 
haunted  hill  belonged  to  her  own  family,  it  was  a  treasury 
of  fairy-lore ;  and  the  moody,  ever-changing  Atlantic, 
with  its  strange  voices  of  calm  and  storm,  its  wheeling  sea- 
birds,  its  huge  swelling  stretches,  its  dark  hiding-places 
amidst  the  cliffs  and  caves,  its  sounds  and  gullies  rich  in 
silver  mackerel — that  Atlantic  peculiarly  her  own — was 
no  less  a  magic  playground  full  of  things  she  could  never 
know,  full  also  of  strange  things — sea-creatures — which  she 


EMILY  LAWLESS  158 

could  know,  and  early  learned  to  dredge  for.  Her  mother 
must  have  made  part  of  all  the  romance.  She;  was  beautiful 
with  a  kind  of  arresting  beauty  which  lay  largely  in  the 
harmony  of  her  features,  but  her  charm  was  not  confined  to 
any  form,  it  was  conveyed  by  her  whole  person.  Slender, 
frail,  sparkling,  grace  itself,  full  of  movement  and  sympathy, 
even  in  old  age  Lady  Cloncurry  made  many  lovers,  and 
in  her  youth  she  carried  all  before  her.  She  and  her  husband 
left  their  eight  children  full  liberty — to  the  four  girls  no 
less  than  the  four  boys.  As  soon  as  she  was  past  babyhood 
Emily  was  allowed  the  run  of  the  far-stretching  grounds 
by  herself,  now  on  foot,  now  on  the  back  of  her  pony.  Yet 
even  at  this  moment,  when  all  her  best  joys  were  open-air 
joys,  she  had  one  other  taste  which  was  prophetic — a 
dominating  love  of  fine  language.  Big  words  had  such  a 
fascination  for  her  that  when  she  could  not  get  out  she  spent 
hours  curled  up  among  the  bookshelves  in  her  father's 
library,  turning  over  heavy  old  volumes,  Elizabethan 
plays  and  the  like  ;  getting  off  by  heart  long  portions  in 
which  the  sound  of  the  words  pleased  her,  and  reciting  them 
to  whoever  would  listen.  The  meaning  did  not  concern 
her,  and  the  results  were  not  altogether  convenient.  On 
one  occasion,  when  she  was  eight  years  old,  her  father  was 
giving  a  dinner  to  a  party  of  sporting  squires,  jovial  port- 
drinking  gentlemen,  and,  proud  of  his  little  girl's  achieve- 
ments, he  told  her  as  she  sat  at  dessert  to  get  up  and  repeat 
one  of  her  '  pieces.'  She  obeyed.  But  unfortunately  her 
last  '  piece  '  was  from  an  Elizabethan  play- — the  speech  of 
an  outraged  husband  to  a  faithless  wife — and  it  had  attracted 
her  because  of  the  grand  sound  of  a  word  which  ended  each 
line  of  the  passage.  It  was  a  term  of  insult,  the  most 
improper  in  the  English  language.  She  loudly  declaimed 
her  blank  verse,  rolling  off  her  favourite  word  with  gusto 
to  the  great  bewilderment  of  the  squires,  till  her  father,  at 
first  speechless,  recovered  his  presence  of  mind  and  with  a 


154  NEW  AND  OLD 

'  Thank  you,  Emily  ;    very  nice,  but  that  is  enough,'  put 
an  end  to  her  performance. 

For  the  rest,  from  the  outset,  her  life  was  that  of  a  natur- 
alist, greatly  to  the  inconvenience  of  the  nursery.  Stray 
grasshoppers  crawled  on  beds  and  carpets ;  an  '  exception- 
ally clammy  frog  .  .  .  carried  in  a  hot  little  hand  till  it  could 
be  carried  no  longer,  was  placed  in  the  widely  open  neck- 
frill  of  a  younger  brother,  which  presented  itself  as  a  suit- 
able receptacle,  from  whence  it  rapidly  travelled  downhill 
over  his  entire  remonstrating  person.'  But  Emily  Lawless's 
aspirations  soon  assumed  more  impressive  proportions. 
'  Nine  years  old,'  she  says,  '  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be 
the  really  culminating  moment,  the  true  pinnacle  of  human 
ambition.'     When  she  was  that  blessed  age  she 

inscribed,  in  a  handwriting  of  quite  incredible  shakiness  and 
illegibility,  the  names  of  three  snail-shells,  two  butterflies,  and 
four  moths — copied  out  of  Lardner's  Cabinet  Encyclopaedia,  with 
spelling  variations  of  her  own — also  of  a  limestone  fossil,  a  piece 
of  feldspar,  a  fragment  of  mica,  a  stone  celt  .  .  .  and  a  piece 
of  plum-pudding  stone — set  down  as  '  Conglomerate.'  After 
which  .  .  .  she  inscribed  above  the  rest  in  a  handwriting  even 
more  tottering  .  .  .  The  Union  of  all  the  Sciences,  by — her  own 
name  in  full. 

Her  ambition  soon  took  a  definite  shape — the  discovery  of 
'  some  bird  or  quadruped  "  new  to  science," '  a  modest  aim  by 
the  side  of  which  all  schoolroom  knowledge,  more  especially 
that  of  the  frivolous  arts,  seemed  a  mere  object  of  contempt. 
The  new  bird  or  quadruped  was  gradually  transformed  into 
a  new  butterfly  or  moth,  and  in  quest  of  this  moth  it  was 
that  the  ten-year-old  entomologist  had  her  great  adventure. 
She  herself,  many  years  afterwards,  recorded  the  terrors  of 
it :  how,  mistaking  the  time,  she  stole  out  secretly  at  3  a.m. 
instead  of  at  daybreak,  the  official  moth-pill-box  in  hand  ; 
and  how  in  the  course  of  her  miserable  search,  chilled  and 
bogy-haunted,  she  '  struck  gold  '  in  the  guise  of  an  hitherto 


EMILY  LAWLESS  165 

unknown  moth;  how,  still  having  two  hours  to  wait  till 
I  Ik-  house  should  open,  she  crept  into  a  haystack,  and  how 
suddenly  she  found  herself  buried  in  it,  unable  to  get  out, 
half  smothered  and  in  very  real  peril,  for  no  one  would 
pass  near  till  the  morning ;  how  when  a  workman  did  at 
last  arrive  and  heard  her  scream,  he  took  her  for  a  ghost 
and  fled  away,  and  how  she  wis  at  last,  extricated  and  went 
home. 

It  was  not  until  hours  after  all  this  that,  for  the  first  time 
since  the  early  morning,  she  suddenly  remembered  her  capture, 
which  was  to  make  her  name  famous  for  ever.  Springing  from 
her  bed,  she  ran  quickly  to  where  her  jacket  had  been  thrown, 
and  plunged  her  hand  with  beating  heart  into  its  pocket.  .  .  . 
In  her  many  writhings  and  wrigglings  the  chip-box  had  long 
since  resolved  itself  into  a  mere  handful  of  broken  chips,  while 
the  captive  itself — the  e  Great  Unknown' — had  resolved  itself 
into  a  few  pinches  of  vividly  green  dust  at  the  very  bottom  of 
her  pocket. 

This  moth-hunt  was  the  precursor  of  many  less  effective 
but  maturcr  raids  by  lantern-light,  under  mossy  tree-roots. 
in  woods,  in  the  open,  wherever  knowledge  and  instinct 
led  her.  And  she  soon  extended  her  field.  Those  who 
accompanied  her  remember  the  excitement  of  sailing  with 
her  on  dredging  expeditions,  whether  among  her  own  rock 
islands  or  in  more  distant  waters,  and  tell  how7  she  always 
knew  just  where  to  stop  the  boat  and  find  the  creatures 
she  sought — '  creatures  that  I  never  knew  were  there,'  said 
a  Riviera  fisherman  who  once  took  her  out  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Her  love  of  flowers  dates  no  less  from  early  days, 
especially  of  the  rock-flowers  of  Clare  and  the  islands  of 
Aran — '  gentian  and  saxifrage,  pimpernel  and  eyebright.' 
None  could  describe  their  kind  better  than  she  could  : 

Close  among  its  ledges  clusters  snowy  dryas, 
Rose-like  are  the  flowers,  yet  it  clutches  hard  the  rock, 
Claw-like  its  rootlets,  roots  like  claws  of  sea-gulls, 
Scornful  of  the  tempest,  and  proof  'gainst  every  shock. 


156  NEW  AND  OLD 

Campions  fill  the  corners,  careless  little  growers, 
Loved  of  the  roving  moth  which  visits  them  at  night ; 
Under  silvery  leaflets  round  balloon-like  blossoms 
Tumble  in  a  tangled  mat  mingled  green  and  white.1 

She  loved  the  struggle  of  these  lowly  rock-plants  with 
sea  and  wind,  their  laborious  radiant  victory,  their  faint 
scent  that  had  to  be  pressed  out  of  them,  their  reserve,  their 
strength,  their  hidden  lives  known  to  so  few — loved  them 
as  she  loved  the  island  people.  Anything  indeed,  shell, 
flower  or  creature,  belonging  to  the  rocks,  gave  her  a  peculiar 
pleasure — and  anything  belonging  to  the  sea.  It  was 
characteristic  of  her  that  it  was  so.  She  liked  bareness 
and  endurance  better  than  fertility  and  ease.  But  she 
adored  colour  and  movement,  swift  movement  of  wind  or 
water,  horse  or  petrel.  To  cleave  the  waves,  swimming  or 
sailing,  to  cleave  the  air  on  horseback— these  were  her 
great  joys,  greater  than  art  or  even  poetry.  Rather  were 
they  the  same  tiling,  for  to  her  they  meant  self-expression  ; 
to  her  '  the  poetry  of  earth  was  never  dead  ' — that  poetry 
which  she  so  often  chose  to  articulate  in  terms  of  science. 
The  strongest  remembrance  of  her  kept  by  an  old  friend  of 
her  youth  was  that  of  a  girl  with  '  tossing  corn-coloured 
hair '  galloping  about  County  Clare.  Her  physical  life  was 
at  least  as  strong  as  her  intellectual  life,  her  taste  for  science 
as  pronounced  as  her  taste  for  poetry. 

There  is  little  to  tell  about  Miss  Lawless's  youth.  She 
had  the  grief  of  losing  her  father  at  fourteen  ;  to  her  fasci- 
nating mother,  like  the  rest  of  the  family,  she  had  a  great 
devotion.  Later,  two  of  her  sisters  died  while  still  in  their 
prime,  and,  worst  grief  of  all,  she  lost  her  younger  brother, 
Denis,  her  closest  companion,  who  shared  so  many  of  her 
gifts  as  well  as  of  her  tastes,  and  who  was  cut  off  by  a  cruel 
illness  in  the  fulness  of  his  brilliant  powers.  Not  long  before 
her  mother  had  passed  away — the  mother  who  had  been  the 

1  '  From  the  Burren '  ( The  Inalienable  Heiitage). 


EMILY    LAWLESS  157 

astonished  adorer  of  her  daughter's  gifts — who  had  always 
seemed  to  that  daughter  younger  than  herself.  So  runs 
the  sonnet  which  Emily  wrote  to  her  : 

Why  reckon  thus  the  years  between  us  twain, 
For  what  is  Autumn  when  its  leaves  are  brown, 

And  brutal  winds  lay  hare  the  shivering  plain, 
Nipping  all  harvests  with  their  deadly  frown  ? 

Or  what  is  Winter,  when  no  flake  of  snow- 
Mas  touched  the  least  leaf  of  one  budding  spray 

In  happy  climes  where  Summers  never  go, 
But  star-lit  night  succeeds  to  laughing  day? 

When  not  one  leaf  in  all  the  forest  fades, 

And  dull  December  breathes  of  odorous  June, 

And  flitting  birds  pipe  through  the  soft  green  glades, 
And  every  streamlet  sings  its  old  sweet  tune? 

Autumn  is  Winter  when  its  days  are  chill, 
But  Winter  without  frosts  is  Summer  still. 

But  these  sorrows  were  scattered  over  many  years. 
Meanwhile  she  lived  out  her  youth  :  she  went  out  into 
the  world,  loving  good  talk,  we  may  be  sure,  more  than 
dancing,  but  never  so  happy  as  when  she  got  back  to  her 
native  land  of  Clare  and  her  rock-strewn  Burren.  Or  else 
it  was  to  the  Cloncurrys'  place  at  Lyons  and,  later,  to 
Maretimo  near  Dublin,  where  her  mother  made  her  home, 
where  her  second  brother,  Frederic,  now  lives.  She  matured 
early,  she  read  much,  spending  hours  over  books — over 
history,  fiction,  science,  poetry  ;  yet,  except  for  a  few  stray 
articles  concerning  natural  history,  she  printed  nothing 
before  middle-age.  Her  first  story,  A  Chelsea  Cousin,  which 
appeared  anonymously  in  1882,  met  with  no  success.  And 
it  was  not  till  four  years  later  that  she  published  her  earliest 
Irish  novel,  encouraged  by  her  meeting  and  quickly  ripen- 
ing intimacy  with  Mrs.  Oliphant,  that  racy  and  fertile 
story-teller,  that  truest  and  tenderest  of  friends  and  critics. 
Hurrish  was  a  story  of  the  peasants  of  Galway.     It  came 


158  NEW  AND  OLD 

out  in  1886,  a  momentous  year  for  Ireland  and  one  that 
doubtless  helped  the  reputation  which  the  book  would  in 
any  case  have  had.  Big  politicians  and  the  ordinary  public 
were  alike  preoccupied  with  the  Irish,  wishing  to  know  more 
of  them,  sensitive  to  the  dramatic  contrasts  their  country 
presents.  Hurrish  had  an  instantaneous  effect.  Distin- 
guished people  of  all  sorts,  those  concerned  with  affairs  and 
Lhosc  concerned  with  letters,  hailed  her  as  a  new  light  in 
the  literary  heaven.  She  found  herself  famous.  But  its 
success  was  exceeded  by  that  of  her  second  Irish  novel, 
Grania,  a  tale  of  the  isles  of  Aran,  which  appeared  in  1892, 
when  her  name  as  a  representative  of  Ireland  had  been 
made  not  only  by  Hurrish  but  by  her  Essex  in  Ireland  (1890) 
and  her  Ireland  ('  Story  of  the  Nations  '  Series,  1S87) ; 
when,  also,  the  curiosity  of  England  about  Ireland  had  in- 
creased. Perhaps  no  woman  ever  had  a  quicker  or  more 
flattering  welcome  from  great  statesmen  as  well  as  from 
fellow-artists.  Public  men  wrote  to  thank  her  for  enlighten- 
ment as  well  as  for  pleasure  ;  Gladstone  was  enchanted  ; 
Morley  compared  her  writing  to  that  of  George  Sand ; 
Meredith,  Lecky,  Lord  Bowen  and  a  host  of  others,  great 
and  small,  acclaimed  her  in  letters  and  in  talk.  But  the 
greatest  laurel  conferred  upon  the  book  was  from  the  hand 
of  Swinburne.  The  story  of  the  island-folk,  primitive, 
mystic,  pagan — unconscious  endurers,  part  of  Nature  and 
her  storms  and  struggles — knowing  no  tongue  but  the  Irish 
— went  straight  to  the  poet's  imagination,  and  his  letter  is 
not  only  a  tribute,  it  is  an  emblem  of  the  way  that  a  book 
could  act  upon  him  : 

Nothing  [he  writes]  that  our  friend  Lady  B can  possibly 

have  told  you  can  express  my  admiration  of  Grania.  I  hope 
you  will  not  think  it  impertinent  of  me  to  avail  myself  of  this 
opportunity  of  saying  to  you  what  I  say  to  others,  that  I  think 
it  just  one  of  the  most  exquisite  and  perfect  works  of  genius 
in  the    language — unique   in   pathos,  humour,  and   convincing 


EMILY  LAWLESS  159 

persuasion  of  truthfulness,     [should  like  to  write  a  great  deal 

more  about  it,  but  I  spare  you  the  trouble  of  reading  what  it 
would  hardly  be  in  good  taste  (or  'form')  to  inflict  on  you. 
Besides,  you  must  be  blasee  with  praise  and  thanksgiving. 
Still,  I  think  if  you  knew  them  you  would  be  gratified  by  the 
appreciation  of  the  ladies,  old  and  young,  of  my  own  family  to 
whom  I  have  given  copies.  But,  of  course,  it  is  one  of  the 
books  about  which  there  can  be  but  one  opinion  among  all 
readers  above  the  intellectual  and  moral    level  of  a  chimpanzee. 

And  again  : 

It  is  I  who  in  common  with  all  your  readers  out  you  a  debt 
of  inexpressible  gratitude.  My  friend,  Mr.  Watts,  desires  me 
to  say  how  fully  he  shares  my  admiration  of  Grania.  But 
then  who  doesn't  ?  I  most  earnestly  hope  that  the  ill-health 
which  alone  could  possibly  account  for  your  feeling  disinclined 
to  confer  any  more  benefits  on  the  world  of  appreciative  readers 
has  passed  or  is  passing  away.  ...  1  should  have  thought — on 
my  honour — publishers  must  all  be  at  your  feet  begging  for 
anything  more  from  the  writer  of  that  immortal  story.  But,  as 
for  offering  the  public  what  the  public  does  not  want  to  read 
and  declines  to  buy,  that  is  my  normal  position,  or  at  least  it 
often  has  been  for  years  together,  and  it  has  never  discouraged 
me  from  writing  to  please  myself  and  the  few  others  I  ever 
care  about  pleasing. 

It  was  not  to  Grania  but  to  Essex  in  Ireland  that  Miss 
Lawless  owed  another  illustrious  acquaintance,  that  with 
Mr.  Gladstone.  This  record  of  Essex's  Irish  experience, 
purporting  to  be  written  by  one  of  his  followers,  was  taken 
by  Gladstone  to  be  authentic ;  he  wrote  in  excitement  at 
the  discovery,  and  was,  perhaps,  still  more  excited  at  the 
further  discovery  of  his  error.  Not  long  after  this,  he 
fulfilled  his  desire  of  seeing  Miss  Lawless.  She  was  staying 
at  Cannes,  in  a  hotel,  and  happened  to  be  resting  on  her 
bed,  in  her  dressing-gown  with  no  shoes  on  her  feet,  when 
she  heard  a  man's  footstep  and  a  knock  at  her  bedroom 
door.     Thinking  it  was  the  waiter  who  always  brought  her 


160  NEW  AND  OLD 

her  post  and  her  tea,  she  took  no  notice  till  a  deep  voice 
said  :  '  May  I  come  in  ?  '  and,  turning  round  hastily,  she 
saw  the  face  of  Mr.  Gladstone  peering  round  the  door.  She 
leaped  to  her  feet,  hid  the  deficiencies  in  her  dress  as  best 
she  could — a  needless  precaution,  for  he  never  noticed  them 
— and  sat  down  near  him  to  enjoy  two  hours  of  his  rich, 
unbroken,  mid-stream  conversation — for,  after  he  had 
explained  that  he  was  staying  with  Lord  Rendel  near  by, 
he  wasted  no  more  time  in  non-essentials.  Tour  de  force 
though  Essex  in  Ireland  is,  it  required,  perhaps,  a  man  of 
Gladstone's  Homeric  naivete  and  immense  power  of  belief 
to  take  it  for  a  contemporary  document ;  its  very  correct- 
ness and  regularity  would  have  aroused  suspicion  in  minds 
more  critical  and  more  conversant  with  the  luxuriant  way- 
wardness of  Elizabethan  English.  But  a  wonderful  piece 
of  work  it  remains — '  the  only  one  of  my  books  that  gives 
me  any  personal  satisfaction,'  she  says,  '  partly  because  I 
am  able  to  imagine  it  is  not  by  me.'  And  there  was  another 
reason.  '  The  true  hero,  or  rather  heroine,'  she  writes  else- 
where, '  is  the  wretched  country  itself,  groaning  under  its 
troubles,  yet  with  that  curious  fascination  which  we  all 
feel,  though  we  can  hardly  tell  where  it  lies.' 

Gladstone's  visit  Miss  Lawless  always  counted  as  among 
the  epochs  in  her  existence.  Fame  brought  her,  indeed,  a 
full  harvest  of  praise — from  Archbishop  Manning  and  from 
Aubrey  de  Vere,  among  others,  from  women  as  well  as 
men  ;  new  friendships  also,  especially  those  with  Lecky, 
the  historian,  and  Sir  Alfred  Lyall,  the  intercourse  with 
whom  remained  as  central  interests  in  her  life.  To  both 
of  these  she  was  an  intellectual  comrade  ;  with  both  she 
discussed  public  matters — Ireland  and  its  history  with 
Lecky,  India  with  Sir  Alfred,  poetry  with  both,  especially 
with  the  writer  of  Theology  in  Extremis.  Sir  Alfred  and 
Emily  Lawless  were  equal  in  their  admiration  of  one  another's 
verse.     And  Lord  Dufferin  was  another  of  the  fervid  corre- 


EMILY  LAWLESS  161 

spondcnts  evoked  by  her  books,  and  remained  as  a  warm, 
supporting  friend  to  cheer  her  with  his  sympathy. 

Friends,  indeed,  Miss  Lawless  never  lacked,  new  or  old. 
And  among  the  oldest  of  these  was  one  who  materially 
influenced  her  practical  life  and  thought — her  cousin,  Sir 
Horace  Plunkett,  with  whose  noble  schemes  for  the  agricul- 
tural and  industrial  development  of  Ireland  she  identified 
herself,  as  far  as  in  her  lay  : 

There  are  [she  wrote  to  him]  few  cases  of  racial  peculiarity 
more  fixed  than  the  marked  Celtic  dislike  to  the  dull  routine  of 
husbandry.  Your  own  co-operative  work  has  been  so  largely  a 
higher  development  of  pastoral  industries  which  are  the  hope 
of  the  Ireland  of  the  future. 

Her  pen  was  ever  at  the  service  of  The  Homestead,  the  organ 
of  Sir  Horace  Plunkett's  Irish  Agricultural  Organisation 
Society,  where  several  of  her  poems  appeared  ;  and  for  its 
leading  contributor — its  most  eloquent  voice — '  A.  E.' 
(George  Russell) — she  had  an  unbounded  admiration.  The 
women's  branch  of  the  movement,  started  within  more 
recent  years,  had  also  her  warm  effectual  sympathy. 

I  have  ' The  United  Irishwomen'  a  good  deal  on  my  mind 
[she  wrote  to  Sir  Horace  in  1911],  and  should  like  to  help  it, 
though  it  would  be  absurd  to  put  my  name  on  any  active  list  of 
it.  I  have  two  short  stories  which  I  think  might  be  put 
together  and  soltl  for  its  benefit  about  Xmas-time.  They  are 
archaic,  but  rather  interesting.  They  were  part  of  a  series  I 
meant  to  make  a  volume  of,  but,  like  all  my  other  literary  work, 
it  died  a  natural  death  from  ill-health.  I  should  call  the 
booklet  Wolfland,  as  it  belongs  to  the  days  when  Ireland  was 
the  home  and  hunting-ground  of  those  cheerful  animals,  and 
we  might  give  it  a  white  coat  and  put  '  Sold  for  the  benefit  of 
"  The  United  Irishwomen  "  '  prominently  on  the  corner. 

I  had  a  long  and  very  amiable  letter  from lately,  who 

asserts  that  I  '  helped  them  ' — i.e.  the  Gaelic  Theatre  and 
circle !     I  was  not  aware  of  it,  but  it  shows  that  I  'm  not  at 

L 


162  NEW  AND  OLD 

least  antagonistic.     I  am  not  anti-Gaelic  at  all  so  long  as  it  is 
only  Gaelic  enthuse  and  does  not  include  politics. 

Like  Sir  Horace  Plunkett,  Miss  Lawless  was  Irish  first 
and  political  afterwards.  She  was  a  Unionist ;  she  would 
have  liked  to  be  able  to  be  a  Home  Ruler,  but  she  did  not 
regard  her  countrymen  as  ripe  for  self-government.  None 
the  less  for  that  did  she  love  her  land  with  a  love  that  was 
in  her  bones  and  being,  and  she  longed  to  work  for  Ireland  : 

You  will  see  [she  said  to  a  friend  in  1905]  that  Yet  Wherefore 
(a  poem)  has  all  your  suggestions  carried  out  except  as  to 
putting  Heaven  into  the  chief  place  instead  of  Ireland.  That 
it  may  be  the  better  place  of  the  two  I  am  willing  to  admit, 
but  the  latter  has  at  present  more  of  my  affections,  so  I  had  to 
leave  it  the  place  of  honour. 

It  was  not  only  in  public  matters  that  Sir  Horace  Plunkett 
affected  his  cousin's  mind.  They  kept  up  a  constant 
correspondence,  and,  perhaps  more  than  any  one,  he  lent 
her  the  intellectual  stimulus  and  companionship  on  which, 
as  her  health  grew  weaker,  she  increasingly  depended.  In 
1911  she  was  working  at  a  new  edition  of  Ireland  and  brood- 
ing over  her  last  story,  Castlebar,  the  completion  of  which 
had  finally  to  be  left  to  another  : 

You  would  be  astonished  [she  wrote  to  Sir  Horace]  at  the 
fresh  impetus  your  last  letter  has  given  to  my  poor,  more  or  less 
moribund  wits.  I  suppose  that  is  the  weak  point  of  being  after 
all  a  woman,  and  so  dependent  on  sympathy  even  in  matters 
intellectual. 

I  woke  up  with  a  clear  vision,  not  only  of  those  two  chapters 
of  the  History  as  I  should  wish  them  written,  but  also  of  that 
Castlebar  book,  which,  as  you  know,  I  made  over  nearly  two 
years  ago  to  Mr.  Shan  Bullock,  and  I  saw  all  the  scenes  at 
Killala,  Ballina,  etc.,  with  the  swarms  of  all-but-savage  yet 
really  harmless  natives,  and  the  little  scared  community  of  Pro- 
testants with  their  splendid  old  leader,  Bishop  Stock,  and  that 
incongruous  but  most  picturesque  addition  of  the  three  French 


EMILY  LAWLESS  163 

officers  alone  in  the  crowd,  but  fresh  from  their  experiences  in 
Italy  and  elsewhere,  under  Buonaparte — so  feeling  it  quite 
natural  that  they  should  dominate  the  situation. 

But  this  is  to  antedate  our  record.  Before  she  began 
Castlebar,  which,  finished  by  Mr.  Shan  Bullock,  can  hardly 
count  as  hers,  she  had  given  us  many  other  volumes.  Two 
years  after  Grania  there  appeared  her  third  Irish  romance, 
Maelcho,  inferior  to  its  predecessors,  both  as  to  matter  and 
success.  It  had  no  effect  with  the  public.  But  she  had 
meanwhile  written  various  tales  which  had  met  with  a 
warm  reception.  Hitherto  we  have  spoken  of  her  Irish 
stories.  But  there  were  others.  As  early  as  1887  Major 
Lawrence,  F.L.S.,  had  first  seen  the  light  in  Murray's 
Magazine,  and  it  was  printed  later  as  a  separate  volume. 
It  is  a  delightful  study  of  a  delightful  man — a  soldier  and 
a  naturalist,  whose  love  of  moths  and  sea-creatures  is  only 
once  forgotten  for  the  love  of  a  woman,  the  heroine  of  the 
history.  It  was  followed  two  years  after  by  Plain  Frances 
Mowbray,  and  other  Stories,  and  by  her  own  favourite  Traits 
and  Confidences,  which  carries  us  again  to  Ireland — a  collec- 
tion of  tales  and  studies,  chief  among  them  '  The  Adven- 
tures of  an  Entomologist,'  already  quoted.  The  Garden 
Diary  (1901)  is  what  it  sets  out  to  be,  and  something  more. 
'  A  good  deal  of  it,'  she  says,  '  is  an  attempt  to  lift  the  small 
natural  history  problems  into  a  region  where  all  Nature 
and  Life  (including  our  own)  becomes,  as  it  were,  one.'  And 
her  flower-beds  and  borders  made  a  good  peg  for  Miss 
Lawless's  thoughts.  Thoughts,  not  fancies  ;  fancy  was 
not  a  ware  Miss  Lawless  dealt  in.  She  had  no  small  change, 
but  she  carried  a  great  deal  of  gold.  Her  Life  of  Maria 
Edgeworth  ('  English  Men  of  Letters  '  Series,  1904)  is  almost 
the  last  prose  that  we  have  from  her  hand.  It  is  not  her 
best  work  ;  how  could  it  be  ?  It  was  written  in  the  teeth 
of  suffering  and  of  sleeplessness.  But  if  it  was  not  a  master- 
piece, it  was  a  victory  ;    and  when  the  odds  are  measured 


164  NEW  AND  OLD 

against    which    it    was    written,    the    critic    may    well    be 
dumb. 

6  Almost  the  last,'  we  said.  Her  last  tale  (except  for 
Castlebar),  The  Book  ofGilly  (1906),  little  known  and  worth 
knowing  well,  concerns  Ireland  and  Irish  nature  and  its 
magic.  It  is  the  story  of  a  child.  It  held  the  echoes  of 
her  own  childhood,  the  dreams  of  later  years  : 

Of  course  [she  says]  the  little  boy's  adventure  is  only  a  sort 
of  cloak  or  screen  to  a  series  of  small  problems — as  how 
impressions  strike  us  while  our  brains  are  still  malleable,  and 
the  contrast  between  the  vast  without  and  the  small  within  is 
still  new,  and  awakens  thoughts  which  in  the  great  majority  of 
people  grow  so  blunt  and  dead  as  they  grow  older  that  they 
practically  cease  altogether.  In  this  respect  the  chapter  about 
a  modern  Don  Quixote  and  Sancho  Panza  is  the  gist  of  the 
book.  One  is  so  afraid  to  overburden  a  framework  of  this  sort 
that  one  puts  complicated  ideas,  which  might  be  set  forth  with 
pomp,  in  the  lightest  fashion  attainable,  with  the  result  that  the 
majority  of  people  overlook  them  altogether !  That,  however, 
is  unavoidable,  and  if  a  few  people,  including  yourself,  under- 
stand, that  is  all  that  I  or  any  other  poor  tamperer  with  the 
mysteries  can  look  for. 

The  prose  of  The  Book  of  Gilly  recalls  Emily  Lawless's 
poetry.  And  when  we  come  to  her  poetry  we  come  to  that  part 
of  her  which  will  endure.  '  With  Hurrish  and  with  Grania ' 
we  might  add,  but  they  almost  make  part  of  her  poetry. 
In  1902  came  out  The  Wild  Geese,  with  a  preface  by  Stop- 
ford  Brooke  ;  in  1909,  The  Point  of  View  (printed  privately 
for  the  benefit  of  the  Gal  way  fishermen) ;  and,  a  month 
ago,  her  last  volume,  The  Inalienable  Heritage — privately 
printed  also — which  she  was  still  revising  when  she  died. 

c  It  is  curious  how  much  easier  rhyme  is  to  me  when  I 
am  weak  and  disabled  than  prose,'  she  once  wrote.  And 
so  it  is  to  her  later  years,  her  years  of  suffering,  that  we 
owe  most  of  her  verse.     Her  words  sum  up  both  its  strength 


EMILY  LAWLESS  165 

and  its  weakness.  It  came  naturally  to  her — by  intuition, 
and  sometimes  by  inspiration.  When  it  did  not,  she  could 
take  no  pains  with  it,  and  the  form  remained  imperfect, 
almost  rough.  When  it  did,  the  words  and  rhythm  came 
with  a  lilt  and  an  inborn  magic  that  had  haunted  her,  so 
had  power  to  haunt  her  readers.  She  had  no  pretensions 
and  thought  but  poorly  of  her  gifts  : 

I  don't  quite  know  what  makes  me  write  the  rhymes  [she 
wrote]  ;  it  often  seems  a  foolish  waste  of  time,  but  they  come 
first  as  thoughts,  mostly,  and  I  think  their  ghosts  tease  less  if 
one  turns  them  into  a  rhyme,  hoAvever  rough. 

And,  except  when  she  was  telling  a  story,  or  (a  large  except) 
when  she  was  drawing  Nature  from  without  and  from  within, 
her  poems  are  almost  exclusively  '  thoughts  ' ;  hardly  ever 
emotional,  nearly  always  profoundly  intellectual.  Here 
again  lay  both  her  strength  and  her  weakness.  The  con- 
centration and  the  white  heat  of  verse  suited  the  expression 
of  her  ideas,  but  that  expression  often  transcended  her 
artistic  faculty  and  broke  up  her  metre,  while  she,  set  upon 
uttering  her  mind's  conception,  forgot  too  much  that  the 
poet  must  not  dare  to  separate  what  he  has  to  say  from  the 
way  in  which  he  says  it.  Much  of  her  poetry  remains  prose 
moulded  in  the  fire  of  poetry.  She  takes  advantage  of  the 
warmth  and  the  consolidating  power  of  rhythm,  but  the 
meaning  and  the  music  are  not  fused  into  one.  Equally, 
therefore,  her  prose  is  often  poetry  ;  her  two  great  gifts — 
that  of  telling  a  story,  that  of  loving,  knowing,  painting 
Nature — are  alike  in  both. 

For  who  is  the  real  hero  of  Grania  and  Hurrish  ?  The 
Atlantic.  Who  are  the  dramatis  personae  ?  The  winds 
and  the  storms — the  rocks — the  weather.  Grania  and 
Hurrish,  the  peasants  and  their  instincts,  are  but  part  of 
these  elemental  forces,  sharers  of  their  passions,  partisans 
or  victims  of  their  conflicts.     Of  course  there  are  fine  human 


166  NEW  AND  OLD 

scenes,  like  the  trial  in  Hurrish  or  Honor's  deathbed  in 
Grania,  inseparable  from  the  author's  talent  for  narrative  ; 
but   in   the   main   her   characters   are   types  :     the   primal 
peasant,  the  priest,  the  landlord,  the  eloquent,  flinty,  good- 
for-nothing  young  fisherman,   or  his  fellow,   whose   Celtic 
romance  is  skin-deep  and  whose  love  of  commerce  and  of 
America  are  fundamental.     Miss  Lawless  did  not  deal  in 
fine  shades.     We  can  see  it  in  such  stories  as  are  not  Irish 
— in  Major  Lawrence,  F.L.S.,  for   instance.     Her  insight 
was  first-rate,  but  it  was  limited  ;    she  understood  passion 
and  egoism,  intellect  and  instinct,  and  these  make  poetry 
and  dramatic  situations  ;    but  she  did  not  much  explore 
the  middle  region,  nor  did  it  interest  her  greatly.     In  taste, 
in  courage,  in  zeal  for  adventure,  in  intellectual  curiosity, 
she  was  of  the  Elizabethans,  and  the  Elizabethan  literature 
it  was  that  went  straightest  to  her  heart.     This  very  absence 
of  analysis  and  her  instinct  for  romance  made  her  stories 
particularly    welcome    to    tired    public    men    in    search    of 
refreshment.     And    her    instinct    for    romance    delighted 
because  it  was   united    to    a   fastidious   accuracy- — a   rare 
combination,  and   one,   whether  in  verse   or   prose,  which 
was  the  distinction  of   Emily   Lawless.     She   shows   these 
qualities  in  her  wonderful  ballads  :  in  '  Fontenoy  '  and  the 
'  Dirge  of  the  Munster  Forest '  (from  The  Wild  Geese),  and 
in  the  fiery,  pathetic  '  Third  Trumpet '  in  her  last  volume. 
Her  ballads  are  probably  the  poems  by  which  she  will  live 
the  longest ;    their  lilt  and  their  melody  were  bom  with 
them  and  carried  her  over  all  difficulties  of  form.     No  less 
is  her  gift  for  precision  and  for  dramatic  effect  shown  by 
such  lines  as  those  '  To  a  Woman  Spinning ' — a  poem  as 
still  as  a  statue,  yet  fraught  with  the  tragic  issues  of  life  : 

How  poor  thou  art,  and  yet  thou  art  not  poor, 


Oh  peacetul  spinner  ! 
Ragged  and  barefoot,  sitting  at  thy  door, 
Thou  art  the  winner  ! 


Thou  art  the  winner 


EMILY  LAWLESS  167 

Tliine  eyes  are  placid;  as  to-day  the  sea, 

Thrice  happy  spinner  ! 
Content  on  her  best  catea  hath  nourished  thee, 

A  royal  dinner  ! 
At  bed  and  hoard  she  serves  thee  on  her  knee, 

Oh  queenly  spinner  ! 
Would  that  such  service  she  would  lend  to  me, 

Heart-broken  sinner  I1 

Or  again,  what  could  be  more  exact  than  this  : 

If  He  who  laid  down  land  and  sea 

Still  feeds  the  shrimp  and  trains  the  bee.  .   .  . 

Follows  the  hawk-moth's  devious  chase, 

The  lace-fly's  dainty  flitting  grace.  .   .   . 

Perceives  the  blue  velella  frail 

Lift  from  the  brine  its  glassy  sail  ; 

Reckons  the  hydroid's  countless  bells, 

The  coral  polyp's  myriad  cells — 

In  one  immortal  grasp  immense 

Gathers  all  things  of  life  and  sense — 

May  He  not,  oh  too  prudent  friend, 

To  your  and  my  poor  needs  attend  ?2 

or  than  any  one  of  her  countless  landscapes  in  '  From  the 
Burren  '  ;   or  than  this  in  '  From  a  Western  Shoreway  ' — 

Wild  wastes  of  moorland  ; 
Deep  pools  of  colour  ; 
Grey  tarns  and  tussocks  ; 
Starry  blue  blossoms  ; 
Sheets  of  bog-myrtle, 
Odorous  with  crushing  ; 
Grey  moths  uprising, 
Ghosts  of  the  heather, 
Others  at  eventide, 
Larger,  more  splendid, 
Peering  mysteriously  ; 
Bats  flitting  swiftly ; 
Wild  storms  at  midnight.3 


1  '  Eighteenth  Century  Echoes'  {The  Inalienable  Heritage). 

a  '  Ignoble  Ease '  ( The  Point  of  View).  3  The  Inalienable  Heritage. 


168  NEW  AND  OLD 

This  clear  hard  grip  of  fact  and  of  the  poetic  truth  which 
fact  enshrines — this  map-like  vision  of  externals  as  well  as 
of  inner  meanings — makes  Emily  Lawless's  language  pecu- 
liarly evocative  of  surroundings,  of  atmosphere,  of  weather. 
Weather,  indeed,  had  an  almost  dramatic  effect  upon  her, 
body  and  soul. 

I  wonder  [she  writes]  has  your  weather  been  fairly  kindly  of 
late  ?  It  seems  funny  to  write  about  it,  yet  there  is  nothing 
that  makes  more  difference,  especially  when  one  is  in  sorrow 
and  anxiety.  A  kindly  winter  sky  is  one  of  the  most  pitiful 
and  tender  things  in  all  Nature,  and  seems  for  the  moment  a 
real  ray  of  comfort.     There  have  been  times  of  late  when  the 

big   grey    trunks    of and    the  bracken  below  must   have 

spoken  to  you  of  something  even  larger  and  more  beautiful 
than  themselves.  Of  course  there  are  others  when  the  gloom 
outside  seems  only  a  part  and  parcel  of  that  inconvenient  gloom 
which  one  must  try  to  keep  down. 

It  was  because  she  felt  thus  intensely  that  she  could  so 
exactly  recall  any  kind  of  physical  impression.  Even  a 
chance  phrase  in  her  prose,  such  as  '  October  began  to 
sicken  towards  November,'  sets  us  down  in  the  midst  of  a 
region  of  familiar  sensations  which  can  never  be  produced 
by  vagueness.  True  poetry,  which  is  the  flower  of  reality, 
is  built  upon  bed-rock  ;  it  includes  matter  of  fact ;  and  if 
it  were  only  for  this  reason  Miss  Lawless  would  stand  as  a 
true  poet.  Perhaps  to  speak  of  this  fusion  of  elements  in 
her  work  is  but  another  way  of  repeating  that  she  united 
poetry  with  science.  Together  they  made  her  religion. 
And  this  brings  us  to  her  fundamental  thought. 

Emily  Lawless  set  out  early  in  quest  of  truth  :  truth  at 
any  cost ;  truth  to  be  pursued  over  rocks  and  thorns, 
through  deep  seas  and  arid  deserts,  with  torn  hands  and 
lame  feet,  in  sun  and  in  storm  ;  truth  to  be  sought  first  in 
Nature,  out  of  doors,  and  indoors  through  the  microscope  ; 
then  in  the  heart  of  men,  past  and  present ;    truth  to  be 


EMILY  LAWLESS  10(J 

wooed,  but  never  at  the  price  of  the  least  grain  of  sin- 
cerity. As  she  grew  older  her  claims  grew  smaller,  and  she 
prayed  to  find  only  one  little  fragment,  but  she  never  gave 
up  the  quest.  She  had  endless  curiosity,  and  great  power 
of  enterprise.  She  sought  the  reconcilement  of  faith  and 
intellect,  of  knowledge  and  belief  ;  she  sought  unity  with 
all  the  zest  of  a  Humanist  of  the  Renaissance.  And  she 
did  not  only  seek  intellectual  unity,  but  unity  with  all  her 
kind — beasts  and  birds  and  primal  savages.  '  Woe  to  us 
if  we  are  so  arrogant  as  to  reject  any  of  our  humble  rela- 
tions,' she  cries  in  '  Kinship.' 1 

We  must  teach  ourselves  patience  and  reverence  that  we  may 
have  eyes  to  see  '  the  eternal  drama  wending  on  its  way.'  Thus 
shall  we  learn  the  true  processes  of  evolution,  without  and 
within.  That  there  is  a  region  where  all  Nature  and  Life  .  .  . 
are  one  and  that  it  has  a  natural  religion  of  its  own  is  certain 
[so  she  writes],  and  I  cannot  hut  think  that  one  gains  a  certain 
peace  by  submitting  oneself  and  all  those  one  loves  to  its  laws. 
It  is  not  an  easy  doctrine,  and  sounds  perhaps  a  hard  one,  but  I 
think  there  is  a  distinct  submissiveness  and  a  creative  Will  to 
be  gained  for  some  of  us  along  that  path  that  is  not  to  be  found 
upon  any  other.  It  does  not  interfere  with  the  devotional  side, 
that  I  can  see,  but  it  accepts  those  broad  laws  of  Nature  that 
we  cannot  honestly  entirely  ignore. 

But  her  thought  was  kindled  by  something  warmer — by 
a  great  and  incessant  aspiration  after  belief,  and,  whether 
foiled  or  bewildered,  she  always  returned  to  it  again.  There 
is  a  poem  of  hers,  hitherto  imprinted,  which  is,  as  it  were,  an 
epitome  of  this  aspiration.     It  was  written  by  the  sea  : 

Over  sir  and — Evening 

June  20,  1904. 
Thin  red  bars  in  the  sky, 

And  a  shore  white-barred  with  foam, 

And  a  single  lark  in  the  gathering  dark 

Singing  above  its  home. 

1   The  Point  of  View. 


170  NEW  AND  OLD 

Out  through  this  silent  dark, 

Out  to  yon  unseen  goal, 

'Twixt  those  thin  red  bars,  to  the  far-off  stars, 

Fly  forth,  poor  questing  soul ! 

Seek  for  the  final  Will, 

Seek  for  the  final  Good, 

The  secret  seed  of  law  and  creed, 

Mistaught ;  misunderstood. 

What  saith  the  Bard  ?— Behold, 

In  beauty's  inmost  lair, 

Meshed  by  her  charms,  'neath  her  milk-white  arms, 

Alone  man  'scapes  despair. 

What  saith  the  sage  ? — Explore. 

Track  Nature's  subtlest  vein, 

By  care  and  thought ;  through  Law  long  sought, 

Thine  answer  may'st  thou  gain. 

What  saith  the  priest  ? — Believe. 

All  will  to  sin  is  bound  ; 

No  thought  or  care  ;  through  anguished  Prayer 

Alone  may  grace  be  found. 

Back,  back,  poor  seeking  soul, 

Back  from  thy  bootless  quest, 

With  wings  earth-bound  ;  with  goal  unfound, 

Back  to  thy  worn-out  nest. 

Thin  red  bars  in  the  sky, 
And  a  shore  white-barred  with  foam, 
And  a  single  lark  in  the  gathering  dark 
Singing  above  its  home. 

Emily  Lawless  believed  in  God,  but  He  was  a  remote,  an 
intellectual  God  ;  her  knowledge  of  science  and  of  the  vast- 
ness  of  the  universe  removed  Him  far  from  her  and  from  the 
crying  appeal  of  man's  soul.  In  that  soul,  ever  seeking, 
never  finding,  victorious  even  in  defeat,  she  also^ — and  more 
fervently — believed.  As  she  grew  older  and  suffered  more, 
as  the  yoke  of  the  body  pressed  more  bitterly  upon  her,  and 
with  it  the  necessity  to  free  herself  from  its  dominion,  she 


EMILY  LAWLESS  171 

experienced  the  want  of  some  closer  union  with  the  power 
outside  ourselves  :  with  the  Divine.  She  felt  the  need  of 
prayer.  Not  that  ill-health  had  weakened  her  thinking 
powers,  or  made  her  more  emotional ;  rather  had  it  widened 
her  range  of  experience  and  her  vision.  She  found  what  she 
sought  in  the  personality  of  the  Central  Figure  of  Christianity ; 
by  no  means  from  the  orthodox  point  of  view,  but  taking 
Him  as  a  spiritual  ideal.  She  had  for  His  character  an  adora- 
tion which  acted  as  a  force  in  her  life,  which  made  Him 
remain  for  her  a  mystery  unexplained.  This  feeling  of  hers, 
she  says,  drew  her  near  to  Pascal  and  to  his  '  intense  affec- 
tion '  for  Christ,  '  of  which  mine,  of  course,  is  but  a  pitiful 
shadow.  Yet  a  doubt,  a  doubt  through  it  all,  as  to  whether 
He  was  more  at  the  very  last  than  a  man,  only  a  man  over- 
topping all  other  men.'  x 

She  would  have  liked  to  believe  more  definitely  than  she 
did.  There  is  a  poem  of  hers,  which,  like  '  Evening,'  has 
never  yet  been  printed  and  which  would  appear  almost  too 
intimate  for  publication,  were  it  not  that  it  is  such  an  en- 
lightening piece  of  autobiography  that  it  would  seem  dis- 
honest to  withhold  it ;  were  it  not,  also,  that  it  may  serve 
others  in  like  stress,  as  she  herself  would  have  desired, 
coming  as  it  does  from  one  who  had  faced  most  problems — 
the  crushing  hugeness  of  the  universe,  the  impotent  insigni- 
ficance of  man.  So  we  subjoin  it  just  as  she  wrote  it — 
perhaps  in  one  of  her  nights  of  pain  : 

In  the  Night 

Who  am  1  ?     Lord,  I  know  not ;  lead  me  on. 

The  night  is  dark  ;  no  stars  are  in  the  skies ; 
All  hint,  all  outline  of  the  path  is  gone, 

And  fierce  and  rough  the  sullen  night  winds  rise. 
Where  only  One  illumes  the  night, 
Do  pilgrims  question  of  His  right? 

1  Miss  Lawless  was,  of  course,  only  considering  Pascal  before  his  con- 
version and  his  retirement  from  the  world. 


172  NEW  AND  OLD 

Dost  thou  believe  that  I  am  very  God? 

I  know  not,  Lord,  I  know  not ;  lead  me  on. 
This  much  I  know — that  where  Thy  steps  have  trod 
Some  Light  still  shines  as  it  has  always  shone. 
Where  only  One  illumes  the  night, 
Do  pilgrims  question  of  His  right  ? 

Dost  thou  believe  then  that  I  died  for  thee? 

I  know  not,  Lord,  I  know  not ;  lead  me  on. 
This  much,  no  more  in  all  the  world  I  see, 
Where  Thy  Light  falters  every  light  is  gone. 
Where  only  One  illumes  the  night, 
Do  pilgrims  question  of  His  right? 

Dost  thou  then  love  Me,  thou  that  criest  so  ? 
I  know  not,  Lord,  1  know  not ;  lead  me  on. 
This  much,  no  more  in  all  the  world  I  know  — 
The  darkness  grows  and  I  am  all  alone. 
Where  only  One  illumes  the  night, 
Do  pilgrims  question  of  His  right? 

And  her  prose  bears  out  her  poetry.  There  is,  in  one  of 
her  letters,  a  passage  which  sums  up  her  whole  creed — her 
faith  in  Christ  and  in  Love  and  in  their  power  of  inspiration  : 

It  has  grown  upon  me  more  and  more  to  feel  that  though 
belief,  in  the  doctrinal  sense  of  the  word,  becomes  yearly  more 
impossible,  more  obviously  human  in  all  its  innumerable 
manifestations,  on  the  other  hand  Love — a  clinging  to  some- 
thing outside  ourselves  and  not  liable  to  accidents — becomes 
yearly  more  possible,  and  seems  to  me  to  be  the  one  supreme 
truth  that  will  some  day  emerge  clearly  above  all  the  fog  and 
the  jar  and  tangle  of  disputing  creeds.  I  do  not  know  what  I 
should  do  if  I  had  the  sole  directing  of  a  young  ardent  nature 
in  such  matters,  but  I  feel  that  what  I  should  do  would  be  to 
try  and  get  that  capacity  for  love  developed,  and  then  let 
everything  else  take  its  chance. 

At  the  lowest  the  Being  that  she  had  learnt  to  love  would  be 
the  noblest  and  tenderest  in  all  history,  and  as  for  miracles,  the 
miracle  of  His  turning  the  bitter  waters  sweet,  and  pulling 
wrecked  lives  straight,  and  that  not  by  ones  and  twos,  but  by 


EMILY  LAWLESS  173 

millions  upon  millions,  is  quite  miracle  enough  for  me.  Of 
course  the  advocatus  diaboli  will  whisper  that  one  is  adoring  a 
myth,  but  one  must  just  Id  him  whisper,  and  once  the  root  of 
love  is  well  grounded  1  do  not  think  such  whispers  matter. 
The  heart  is  a  far  more  tenacious  organ  than  the  head,  and  not 
nearly  so  much  at  the  mercy  of  those  loud  winds  of  Doubt. 

Emily  Lawless  increased  in  the  strength  that  helped  her 
to  draw  her  consolation  from  far  away.  To  be  a  rank 
materialist  seemed  even  more  impossible  to  her  than  to  be 
a  rank  dogmatist : 

And  yet  [she  wrote,  concerning  a  woman's  character  in  a 
novel  written  by  a  friend],  I  ask  myself  could  she,  being  what 
she  was,  have  been  so  wholly  without  the  spiritual  impulse  ?  I 
feel  so  drawn  to  her  that  I  a  little  resent  her  being  so  unable 
to  lift  her  eyes  beyond  her  own  funeral.  I  do  not  mean  not 
being  what  is  called  '  religious,'  but  having  no  sense  of  even 
that  elemental  drawing  to  the  Beyond  which  comes  to  all  but 
the  absolutely  materialised.  Did  you  mean  her  to  have  at 
bottom  only  the  sort  of  love  for  her  own  little  graceful  self  and 
for  those  who  appreciated  her  which  does  make  up  the  ideal 
side  of  so  many  women,  and  lends  a  sort  of  truth  to  men's 
assertion  that  most  women  are  at  heart  more  material  than 
they? 

She  was  not  always  able  to  feel  thus  ;  she  had  her  moods 
of  despair  and  of  negation,  generally  after  bodily  distress, 
and  to  know  her  we  must  look  at  her  in  all  her  moods  : 

We  have  true  Good  Friday  weather  [she  wrote  on  Good 
Friday  1905] — hard,  cold,  dark,  cheerless,  as  if  the  world  were 
going  back  into  the  Dark  Ages  and  hardly  any  comfort  remained, 
except  that  super-mundane  one  which  one  has  often  no  courage 
to  cling  to  and  hardly  holds  with  any  approach  to  reality.  I 
ought  not  to  write  so,  and  to  you  of  all  people,  but  I  have  been 
waiting  for  a  good  hour,  and  so  far  it  has  not  yet  chosen  to 
come.  ...  If  there  was  any  remedial  aim  in  these  degrading 
miseries  all  would  be  well,  but  mentally  I  cannot  see  it  any 
more  than  in  the  sufferings  of  an  owl  or  a  rabbit  caught  in  a 


174  NEW  AND  OLD 

trap,  though  the  soul  of  one  cries  out  instinctively  to  what  lies 
out  in  the  great  Beyond.  That  there  is  a  mind  and  even  a 
heart  (the  same  that  beat  at  Galilee)  I  am  convinced ;  it  is  the 
little  personal  question  that  seems  so  monstrously  egotistical  and 
anthropomorphic  to  mix  up  with  such  issues.  A  gnat  loved  by 
the  sun  would  be  a  feeble  simile  for  such  presumption. 

But  it  was  not  her  usual  custom  to  embody  these  darker 
moments  in  words,  and  what  endures  in  the  memory  of 
those  who  knew  her  is  her  more  victorious  note — the  re- 
markable triumph  of  her  strong  mind  over  her  quivering 
nerves  : 

Judging  by  myself  [she  wrote  to  an  invalid  friend],  I  should 
say  that  even  the  very  worst  ill-health  is  bearable  so  long  as  it 
does  not  entail  a  suffocation  and  extinction  of  one's  powers  of 
thinking  clearly.  That  to  me  is  the  one  really  intolerable 
condition  of  things,  and  it  is  one  that  a  complete  nerve-break- 
down brings  with  it.  A  partial  nerve-collapse  can  fight  against 
it,  and  pain  seems  even  sometimes  to  make  the  brain  clearer  in 
a  topsy-turvy  sort  of  fashion.  ...  If  pain  and  weakness  have 
any  use  ...  it  is  that  they  divide  true  things  from  untrue 
and  they  leave  one  room  to  think  of  the  few  one  loves,  and 
hope  (I  will  not  say  pray)  for  them — at  any  rate  to  love  them 
still  more  than  before. 

.  .  .  Do  not  fret  for  me,  as  we  never  have  to  bear  more  than 
we  can  stand.  When  that  point  is  really  passed  (not  fancifully) 
relief  comes.  .  .  .  The  sick  souls  who  fight  well  make  a  little 
private  Army  Corps  of  their  own,  I  think  ! 

She  had  won  her  brevet  as  Captain  in  that  Corps.  Books 
came  to  her  aid,  perhaps  increasingly,  and  one  of  those 
which  helped  her  most  in  the  last  two  years  was  the  Pensees 
de  Pascal : 

I  have  been  re-reading  Pascal  lately  [she  said],  or  rather 
dipping  into  him  here  and  there,  and  am  deeply  touched  and 
interested  by  seeing  how  closely  his  Greatness  was  assimilated, 
on  the  lower  side  of  course  only,  to  my  Littleness,  for  he  too 
was  accable  d'un  mal  de  tele  perpeluel,  and  but  for  the  accidental 


EMILY  LAWLESS  175 

internal  colic  which  mercifully  (for  him)  ended  him,  would  have 
remained  probably  to  old  age,  always,  always  suffering.  ...  I 
find  myself  so  close  to  him  on  the  orthodox  or  non-orthodox 
side.  .  .  .  His  views  of  the  possibilities  for  the  soul  in  another 
life  are  just  my  own,  and  therefore,  I  suppose,  of  most  who 
think  ;it  all  in  these  days — that  it  is  a  bare  chance,  one  in  a 
hundred,  perhaps  ;  a  wager,  as  he  says,  or  rather  a  lottery.  '  II 
faut  travailler  pour  I'incertain.'  There  it  is  !  And  the  splendour 
of  that  one  chance,  even  for  those  who,  like  myself  again,  long 
and  long  for  rest,  and  even  for  non-consciousness,  is  so  tremen- 
dous that  it  is  worth  all  other  certainties. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  life  of  Emily  Lawless 
was  all  endurance.  Even  in  the  last  eighteen  months,  a 
time  of  incessant  suffering,  she  had  unexpected  rallies  and 
delightful  hours  of  distraction.  Before  that,  she  enjoyed 
some  leisurely  spaces  without  pain.  Nothing  gave  her  more 
pleasure  than  the  recognition  which  she  received  from 
Ireland  when,  in  1905,  the  University  of  Dublin  conferred 
upon  her  the  honorary  degree  of  Litt.D.,  and  she  went  in 
person  to  accept  it.  Her  life,  until  1911,  was  spent  between 
England  and  her  own  land,  to  which  she  paid  a  long  yearly 
visit.  While  her  mother  lived,  their  family  plans  and 
Emily's  health  compelled  them  to  lead  a  nomadic  life,  now 
in  hired  houses  in  Windsor  or  Wimbledon  or  Surrey,  now 
in  hotels  abroad,  where  Miss  Lawless  was  obliged  to  winter. 
But  after  Lady  Cloncurry  died  these  conditions  came  to 
an  end,  and  Emily  at  last  experienced  the  joy  of  a  settled 
home.  With  her  devoted  friend,  Lady  Sarah  Spencer,  she 
settled  at  Hazelhatch,  at  Gomshall,  Surrey,  a  charming 
house  which  they  built  after  their  own  desires.  And  here 
she  could  indulge  in  the  two  pursuits  that  pleased  her  most 
— that  of  gardening  and  that  of  friendship.  The  garden- 
ing was  no  mere  pastime.  She  was  not  only  a  born  land- 
scape gardener,  but  she  worked  like  one.  Even  when  she 
was  ill,  she  spent  hours  standing  or  on  her  knees,  planting, 


176  NEW  AND  OLD 

pruning,  weeding,  carrying  out  clearances  in  shrubberies — 
on  better  days  inventing  little  water-works.  The  labour, 
however  hard,  soothed  her  nerves.  Who  that  knew  her 
cannot  see  her  stooping  absorbed,  as  she  handled  some 
delicate  plant  with  her  strong,  capable,  maternal  touch  ? 
Her  plants  were  really  like  her  children,  each  with  its 
separate  character  and  destiny  which  it  was  her  darling 
work  to  study. 

Perhaps  she  loved  the  spring-flowers  best :  '  Scilla  and 
snowdrop,  windflower  and  crocus — Brave  little  soldier-lads, 
fearless  of  the  cold.'  1  And  though  she  liked  to  go  to 
London  to  see  people,  she  could  not  bear  to  miss  one  of 
these  early  blossoms.  '  After  facing  the  snow  for  three 
mortal  weeks,  and  never  seeing  the  ground  all  that  time, 
how  can  I  stay  away  now,'  she  writes,  '  when  the  scillas  are 
all  beginning  to  peer  and  there  are  two  buds  on  your  blue 
primroses  ?  ' 

And  who  that  knew  Emily  Lawless  cannot  also  see  her 
as  she  hurried  to  welcome  an  arriving  friend  :  tall,  almost 
angular,  in  her  shady,  shapeless  gardening  hat — a  hat  which 
seemed  impatient  of  vanity — and  her  brown  coat  and  skirt 
winch  fell  in  thick,  rather  heavy  folds,  almost  like  the  carved 
stone  dress  of  a  Crusader's  wife  on  some  Cathedral  tomb  ? 
There  was  something  stately  about  her  long,  firm  step,  which 
did  not  suit  with  ill-health.  Nor  did  it  lead  you  to  expect 
the  Irish  warmth  of  your  reception.  '  For  unto  a  friend  a 
man  .  .  .  tosseth  his  thoughts,'  were  the  words  she  chose 
as  the  motto  for  The  Point  of  View  ;  and  tossing  her  thoughts 
by  the  fireside,  or  in  the  sunlight,  was  to  her  true  recreation. 
It  was  more,  it  was  food.  Her  friends  were,  so  to  speak, 
her  intellect-escapes  ;  they  removed  from  her  the  pressure 
of  thought  which  often  weighed  down  her  solitude. 

Not  that  she  despised  a  good  gossip,  or  an  interest  in 
personal  things.     They  amused  her,  and  she  needed  to  be 

1  '  From  the  Burren '  ( The  Inalienable  Herilage). 


EMILY  LAWLESS  177 

amused — a  need  which  often  impelled  her  to  accept  invita- 
tions when  bodily  case  would  have  kept  her  at  home.  Nor 
was  her  conversation  guiltless  of  pungent  comment  and  of 
not  infrequent  satire.  She  did  not  suffer  the  stupid  gladly, 
and  she  quickly  showed  when  she  was  bored. 

Her  talk  was  habitually  matter-of-fact  and  literal  ;  it 
hardly  ever  betrayed  the  poet.  She  spoke  best  either  about 
public  affairs  or  else  upon  speculative  problems.  She  was  not 
brilliant,  but  she  was  sound — with  distinction ;  sometimes 
weighty — as  in  her  pronouncement  upon  the  vexed  question 
of  Women's  Suffrage,  and  of  what  she  calls  the  '  wrong  and 
unworthy  anti-woman  campaign  '  : 

When  one  knows  how  cruelly  hard  the  lives  of  women- 
workers  are,  and  how  vast  the  numbers  that  are  driven  to  daily 
work  outside  their  hours  (over  five  millions,  larger  than  the 
whole  population  of  Ireland,  or  Scotland,  or  Australia  !),  when 
she  knows  too  how  terrible  a  gulf  of  temptation  yawns  for  the 
younger  ones  if  they  find  the  effort  to  live  by  their  work  too 
hard,  it  makes  me  most  indignant  that  anyone  should  want  to 
perpetuate  all  the  barriers  that  have  come  down  from  a  cruel  old 
past.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  Suffragette  methods,  I  need 
hardly  say,  and  have  personally  no  wish  for  a  vote,  but  the 
helplessness  of  great  bodies  of  women-workers  even  against 
admitted  wrongs,  simply  because  there  is  no  one  whose  interest 
it  is  to  speak  for  them,  is  too  plain  a  fact  for  any  fair-minded 
person,  man  or  woman,  to  deny. 

Miss  Lawless's  mind  was  always  open  on  all  sides.  Know- 
ledge attracted  her,  even  when  it  lay  beyond  her  reach. 

Why  do  you  and  I  not  know  Greek  ?  Is  it  not  outrageous 
to  think  of  all  the  young  donkeys  and  all  the  simpering  useless 
dons  who  do  ?  It  is  the  only  tongue  that  it  really  irks  me  not 
to  know,  though  I  know  none  but  English  and  that  very  super- 
ficially. I  have  always  realised  that  one  never  would  really 
know  the  force  of  a  few  words  unless  one  knew  it;  those 
'jewels  five  words  long'  upon  old  Time's  forefinger  are  more 

M 


178  NEW  AND  OLD 

numerous  in  Greek,  I  take  it,  than  in  any  other  tongue  man 
ever  spoke,  though  the  English  have  not  a  few  shining  ones — 
cut  by  a  lapidary  called  Shakespeare  amongst  others! 

It  was  not  often  that  in  her  letters  she  expressed  herself 
at  length  upon  contemporary  literature,  but  when  she  did 
it  was  with  decision  : 

If  one  sets  even  the  very  highest  book  that  does  smack  of 
reality  beside  it  [she  writes  of  a  modern  novel  by  a  woman] — 
say  Zola's  Germinal — any  reader  can  see  the  difference  in  a 
minute.  We  may  not  know,  or  wish  to  know,  the  ways  of 
French  miners,  and  we  may  decline  to  accept  Zola's  special 
bias  in  favour  of  the  one  never-under-any-circumstances-to-be- 
omitted-act,  but  all  the  same  the  book  is  alive — an  ugly  beast, 
but  a  living  one  ;  the  other  is  not,  and  never  was  alive,  so  the 
fact  of  its  smelling  so  disagreeably  seems  the  more  inexcusable. 

Vitality  was  her  first  demand  from  what  she  read,  and  with 
reason,  for  to  her  a  book  could  become  a  second  existence, 
especially  when  it  was  written  by  a  friend. 

It  is  a  book  [she  wrote  to  one  such]  to  live  beside  one  and  to 
be  opened  and  read  whenever  one  wants  to  escape  out  of  one's 
grey  present  into  an  atmosphere  of  flowing  water  and  quick 
passing  clouds  and  a  glory  of  light  and  space.  I  had  all  that 
in  an  even  more  intense  form  in  my  Burren  last  summer,  but  I 
lay  on  its  rocks  like  a  sick  old  sheep,  or  a  bunch  of  dead 
heather,  and  never  wrote  a  line  ! 

She  was  a  warm  admirer  of  her  friends.  And  what  a  list 
of  friends  she  had,  English  and  Irish  ;  old  friends,  like  Sir 
Henry  and  Lady  Blake,  who  travelled  with  her  about  the 
isles  of  Aran  when  she  was  preparing  for  Grania,  and  who 
corresponded  with  her  from  all  parts  of  the  world  ;  Lady 
Blake's  sister,  the  Duchess  of  St.  Albans  ;  or  Lady  de  Vesci 
and  Mrs.  Studd,  the  true  and  tried  companions  of  so  many 
years  ;  or  women  writers  of  mark  among  whom  two  became 
her    intimates— Mrs.    Humphry   Ward    and    Mrs.    Fuller- 


EMILY  LAWLESS  170 

Maitland,  the  author  of  Bethia  Hardacre's  Daybook,  Miss 
Lawless's  favourite  bedside  volume  ;  or  country  neighbours, 
like  Mrs.  Litchfield,  and  Miss  Byers,  and  Miss  Flora  Russell, 
who  lent  her  their  constant  companionship  ;  or  her  mother's 
friends,  such  as  Lady  Ritchie,  the  daughter  of  her  admired 
Thackeray  ;  or  younger  people,  like  her  niece,  Mrs.  Goschen, 
and  Miss  Venetia  Cooper,  who  gave  her  an  untiring  devo- 
tion !  Their  sheltering  care  was  hers  to  the  end,  and  it 
helped  her.  Nature  also,  whom  she  had  so  loved,  did  not 
lose  the  power  to  console.     Her  prayer  was  granted  : 

Oil  mighty  artist ! 
Life's  benefactor, 
Earliest  and  dearest, 
When  shall  thy  joys  fail? 
Cease  to  enchant  me  ? 
Cease  to  soothe  sorrow  ? 

•  •  • 

Only  in  Death.1 

Emily  Lawless  was  that  rare  being,  a  religious  Stoic. 
Still  rarer  is  it  that  the  Stoic  is  an  artist,  yet  all  these  con- 
trasts she  combined.  She  was  not  unlike  those  plants  she 
loved  so  well.  Her  bloom  was  born  of  rocks,  and  nourished 
by  struggle  and  tempest.  Her  roots  were  deep  and  strong, 
and  she  could  only  live  within  earshot  of  the  infinite  sea. 
Her  spirit  loved  solitude.  It  also  loved  sunlight.  And  if 
its  colour  and  its  scent  did  not  strike  the  ordinary  passer-by, 
they  were  there  for  those  who  chose  to  stoop  close  to  her. 
The  fragrance  was  crushed  out  of  her,  but  it  endured. 

1  '  From  a  Western  Shoreway '  ( The  Inalienable  Heritage). 
1914. 


'LOIZA1 

'Loiza  is  '  in  business,'  so  she  tells  you,  '  in  the  jam-line.' 
She  used  to  be  '  in  bottle- washing,'  but  the  pay  was  too 
poor  and  she  thought  she  would  better  herself.  Now  she 
gets  ten  shillings  a  week  by  making  jam  for  eight  hours  a 
day,  besides  her  earnings  for  overtime.  A  lady  who  be- 
friends her  asked  her  why  she  would  not  go  into  service, 
where  she  would  be  so  much  better  off.  '  I  wants  my 
eveninks,'  says  'Loiza ;  '  besides,  servants  is  no  better  than 
slaves  ;  slaves  is  what  /  call  'em.  Look  at  my  friend  Sarah 
Bull,  the  one  wot 's  in  the  'Orspital ;  she  was  a  "  general," 
till  she  went  there.  They  was  caretakers  of  orfices,  was 
her  master  and  missus — very  land  people  too.  But  they 
was  ten  in  family,  washin'  done  at  'ome,  and  large  rooms  ; 
she  'ad  to  do  the  cookin'  beside  mindin'  the  children,  and 
only  ten  pounds  a  year,  and  one  day  a  month.  She  was 
never  in  bed  till  twelve  at  night,  and  no  fun.  Why,  it  ain't 
worth  it,  it  ain't.' 

'Loiza  is  the  fourth  of  eight  children.  She  was  christened 
Eliza  Leonora,  as  her  mother  was  reading  a  penny  novelette 
the  day  before  her  birth.  Their  last  girl  had  been  called 
Briseis,  after  a  ship  in  the  Docks  which  her  father  was  un- 
loading at  the  time  of  her  baptism.  'Loiza  is  very  fond  of 
fun — her  sort  of  fun.  She  went  last  January  to  the  person 
she  calls  her  '  loidy-f riend  '  to  ask  for  a  letter  for  the  London 
Hospital ;  for  'Loiza  is  not  strong,  in  spite  of  her  fresh 
colour  and  bright  black  eyes,  half  bold,  half  kind,  that  look 
out  from  under  a  heavy  fringe.     She  has  had,  she  says,  one 

1  [This  article  and  the  three  that  follow  it  were  contributed  to  The  Pi/o/.] 
180 


XOIZA  181 

of  her  old  heart-attacks.  How  did  she  get  it  ?  '  Well,  it 
all  cum  along  of  dancin'  too  much  on  Roxin'  Night.  Tt  was 
chap  wot  treated  her.'  On  Sunday  nights  slu-  walks 
out  with  this  mysterious  person — indifferently  called  hi  c 
'  chap  '  or  her  '  bloke  ' — a  small  wiry  man,  much  shorter 
than  'Loiza,  who  wears  a  large  check  suit  and  a  billycock 
hat  on  one  side  of  his  head.  But  she  is  proud  to  take  his 
arm  when  they  walk  in  the  Mile  End  Road,  the  Mall  of  the 
East,  and  she  wears  her  long  gold  plush  '  paletot,'  and  a 
black  velvet  hat  with  green  plumes  which  she  hires  for  the 
evening  from  the  shop  in  Cable  Street,  St.  George's.  Her 
paletot  is  held  in  at  the  back  by  a  tasteful  beetle  in  black 
jet,  and  the  collar  is  pinned  by  a  gilt  heart  and  anchor,  the 
gift  of  her  adorer,  to  match  the  symbols  he  has  tattooed  in 
blue  ink  on  her  arm. 

There  are  three  stages  in  each  of  'Loiza's  courtships  (and 
this  is  her  seventh) — walking  out,  arming  (when  the  lady 
takes  the  arm  of  the  gentleman),   and  keeping  company 
(when  the  gentleman  takes  the  arm  of  the  lady).     'Loiza 
was   in   the  second   stage.     She   herself   '  had  kep'   pretty 
straight '  with  her  lovers,  more  from  rough  instinct  than 
from  principle,  for  'Loiza  thinks  little  of  moral  backsliding 
in  her  pals.     She  is  a  great  deal  stricter  about  other  things  ; 
would  never  dream  of  touching  a  penny  that  was  not  her 
own  ;    and  would  give  her  last  crust  to  her  little  brothers 
and  sisters,  or  renounce  a  new  gew-gaw  to  buy  the  baby  a 
pelisse.     She  lays  great  stress  also  on  church  attendance, 
which  for  her  embodies  a  social  etiquette  necessary  to  her 
sense  of  propriety.     Most  of  her  cronies,   whatever  their 
conduct,  resemble  her  in  this.     Emma  Finn,  for  instance, 
of  209  Fashion  Alley,  Spitalfields,  whose  career  is  by  no 
means  what  it  should  be,  looks  deeply  hurt  when  the  '  lady- 
friend  '  asks  her  if  she  goes  to  church.     '  /  'm  not  Church, 
I  'm  Chapel,  if  you  please,'  she  replies  with  injured  dignity  ; 
and  'Loiza,  standing  by,  seems  as  outraged  as  her  com- 


182  NEW  AND  OLD 

panion.  'Loiza  herself  is  not  Chapel — she  is  Church.  Two 
years  ago  she  was  confirmed  :  '  And  I  wore,'  she  exclaimed, 
'  a  lovely  crown  of  fish-bones  wot  my  sailor-brother  brought 
back  from  the  Brazils.'  The  laying  on  of  hands  must  have 
been,  on  this  occasion,  a  lacerating  discipline  for  the  bishop. 
'Loiza's  serried  family  life  (ten  people  in  two  rooms)  schools 
her  in  the  domestic  amenities — very  like  those  of  other 
families  translated  to  a  lower  scale.  '  He  swears  at  me, 
miss,  as  if  'e  was  my  brother,'  she  once  said  of  a  young  man 
acquaintance,  and  the  phrase  epitomises  the  tender  privi- 
leges of  kinship.  On  the  whole  she  is  good-tempered,  if 
you  give  her  sufficient  latitude  ;  but  once  put  her  out  and 
she  may  do  anything.  Her  pleasures  are  simple  enough — 
a  penny  ball  at  Wapping  with  her  '  chap,'  an  extra  meal  of 
periwinkles  or  sausages  (she  calls  them  '  puzzles  '),  or  a 
cheap  excursion  to  Clacton-on-Sea.  '  Hopping,'  which 
accounts  for  the  long  disappearance  every  summer  of  so 
many  of  her  circle,  is  not  approved  of  by  'Loiza,  because 
it  keeps  her  too  long  from  the  shops.  She  describes  the 
country  as  '  a  deadly-come-lively  place  '  if  she  has  to  spend 
more  than  a  day  there. 

'Loiza  is  a  Robin  Hood  in  her  way,  though  she  knows 
no  forest  save  that  of  Epping  on  Bank  Holidays.  Yes, 
'Loiza  is  an  outlaw  ;  she  is  not,  by  any  means,  without  a 
code  of  morals,  but  the  code  she  has  includes  very  few 
virtues  and  excludes  very  few  vices.  Kindness  is  there, 
and  honesty,  together  with  generosity,  but  truth  and 
social  morality  are  not  yet  entered  on  her  register.  There 
is  no  strongly  marked  line  between  her  and  the  savage  ; 
but  she  is  an  honest  savage,  frankly  insisting  on  her  own 
enjoyment — a  savage  with  possibilities.  Heroism  and 
devotion  are  not  unknown  to  the  aborigines.     (1900.) 


'SAMUEL1:    CHRISTMAS   EVE  183 


'SAMUEL':    CHRISTMAS   EVE 

'  Samuel  '  was  very  small  and  very  white ;  he  held  a 
penny  in  his  mouth,  and  his  coat  was  tattered.  Though 
he  was  probably  about  eight,  he  seemed  to  have  no  age 
at  all.  He  was,  I  think,  the  oldest  being  I  have  ever  seen. 
This  was  not  so  much  because  of  his  wizened  little  face, 
but  because  of  the  astonishing  dignity  of  his  person.  He 
appeared  to  possess  no  surname ;  at  least  the  '  young 
lady '  of  the  toy-shop  told  me  that  he  had  come  there  '  for 
years,'  and  that  she  and  her  colleagues  had  never  heard 
of  one.  This  namelessness,  this  agelessness,  this  inherent 
dignity,  invested  him  with  mystery.  The  power,  the 
majesty,  of  remoteness  was  his.  He  dwelt  aloof  from 
others  ;   he  was  after  the  Order  of  Melchisedec. 

The  '  young  lady '  informed  me  that,  whenever  he  had  a 
copper  to  spend,  he  gave  the  toy-shop  his  custom.  No 
one  knew  whence  he  got  his  pennies.  But  while  the  possi- 
bilities of  choice  were  his,  Samuel,  for  the  hour,  became  a 
king.  Hence  the  grandeur  of  his  bearing.  Time,  space, 
every  limitation  of  mortality  was  annihilated.  '  The  world 
was  all  before  him  where  to  choose.' 

Balzac  furnished  his  empty  attic  by  writing  the  names 
of  beautiful  objects  on  placards,  and  hanging  them  on  his 
walls.  They  were  his  possessions.  Quite  as  surely  did 
Samuel  make  his  own  the  guinea  steam-engines,  the  bears 
that  danced  by  clockwork,  the  opulent  stables  and  coach- 
man at  twelve  and  six.  In  his  mouth  was  a  penny,  the 
symbol  of  the  power  to  purchase  :  the  shop  was  his.  But 
when  he  first  entered  I  had  seen  his  eye  dart,  bird-like,  to 
the  penny  stall,  and  to  the  exact  corner  of  it  where  lay  the 
bladder  air-balls  (with  magenta  wooden  sticks)  that  blow 
out  with  a  squeak  when  you  hold  them  between  your  lips. 


184  NEW  AND  OLD 

There  was  his  final  choice,  made  long  ago  in  the  streets  ; 
there  was  his  predestined  fate — the  end  which  now  seemed 
as  far  off  as  death.  First  there  came  all  the  fun — all  the 
regal  fun — of  free-will. 

He  took  an  hour  over  it,  moving  with  deliberation,  and 
he  looked  at  every  toy  on  the  premises.  Each  nook,  each 
glass  cupboard  in  the  place,  was  known  to  him,  and  no  one 
thought  of  disturbing  him.  The  thing  which  he  con- 
templated longest  was  a  large  Noah's  ark,  full  of  excellent 
beasts  and  birds — not  the  common  grey  wood  ones,  but 
decent,  highly  varnished  creatures  with  outlines.  Samuel 
stood  with  his  tiny  red  hands  in  his  apertures — I  cannot 
call  them  pockets — and  he  dared  the  Hon  with  the  solemnity 
and  courage  of  a  Nimrod.  '  Well,  Samuel,'  at  last  said 
the  active  '  young  lady  '  who  was  serving,  '  and  what  do 
you  want  to-day  ?  '  But  she  got  no  answer ;  the  poor 
moment  for  actuality  had  not  yet  come ;  he  taught  her  a 
lesson  in  the  fitness  of  things. 

When  the  hour  was  up,  he  advanced  philosophically  to 
the  penny  stall.  There  was  no  sense  of  a  reverse  in  his 
deportment,  no  come-down-in-the-world  air  about  him. 
Cinderella,  who  became  a  kitchen-maid  again  when  the 
clock  struck  twelve,  was  a  parvenue  beside  Samuel.  He 
bore  himself  like  a  business  man  who  has  allowed  himself 
sixty  minutes  for  recreation  and  must  now  return  to  his 
accustomed  routine.  With  brisk  decision  he  drew  the 
penny  from  his  mouth,  put  it  down  on  the  stall,  and,  after 
comparing  imperceptible  differences  of  size  in  three  magenta 
wooden  sticks,  he  chose  what  seemed  to  him  the  longest. 
Then  he  put  the  air-ball  to  his  lips,  slowly  blew  it  out, 
ascertained  that  it  gave  the  proper  squeak  for  his  money, 
and  departed.  All  this  he  had  done  with  a  critical  sobriety 
and  without  any  joie  de  vivre.  Joy  was  over :  this  was 
business. 

Samuel  had  early  made  the  great,  the  all-important  dis- 


AN  AMATEUR  PHILANTHROPIST  185 


> 


covcry  that  Fact  and  Truth  arc  not  the  same  thing.  Half 
the  mistakes  in  life  eome  from  confounding  the  two.  Fact 
ought  to  be  the  child  of  Truth  ;  often  it  is  a  stepchild  or  a 
changeling,  unlike  Truth,  even  hostile  to  her.  If  we  worship 
Fact,  the  Truth  is  not  in  us  and  we  shall  not  enjoy  ourselves 
very  much.  What  we  call  illusion  is  often  Truth  ;  the 
poets  and  Samuel  know  that  this  is  so.  And,  in  so  far, 
Samuel  is  a  genius. 

When  I,  too,  departed  with  my  parcels,  I  had  got  much 
more  than  three  dozen  toys  for  a  Christmas  tree.  I  had 
had  a  lesson  in  the  art  of  living.     (1901.) 


THE   CONFESSIONS   OF  AN   AMATEUR 
PHILANTHROPIST 

A  philosopher  of  my  acquaintance  once  said  that  all  the 
confusions  of  life  arose  from  our  taking  our  own  normal  to 
be  that  of  other  people.  When  we  come  to  think  of  it,  this 
cause  is  at  the  bottom  of  most  of  our  great  divisions  ;  the 
division  between  youth  and  age,  the  poetic  and  the  matter- 
of-fact,  the  rich  and  the  poor.  Perhaps  it  is  in  our  relations 
with  the  poor — in  our  philanthropic  experiments — that  the 
mistake  has  the  worst  or,  at  any  rate,  the  most  delusive 
effects.  We  talk  to  them  as  if  their  moral  language  were 
the  same  as  our  own,  judge  them  by  our  standards  on 
a  reduced  scale,  and  consequently  credit  them  with  the 
wrong  virtues  beside  the  wrong  vices.  The  mischief  of 
this  is  apparent  especially  in  schools  and  training- 
homes. 

Generalising  is  always  dull  as  well  as  dangerous,  and  the 
only  chance  of  getting  at  facts  is  for  every  man  to  come 
down  to  his  personal  experience.  If  we  cannot  serve  as 
guides,  we  can  at  least  be  useful  as  preventives.     Some 


186  NEW  AND  OLD 

years  ago  I  resolved  to  start  a  small  country  training-home 
for  servant-girls — Whitechapel  '  generals  ' — especially  such 
as  were  anaemic ;  not  an  institution,  but  a  cottage  home, 
where  their  individual  needs  might  be  provided  for.  A 
long  period  of  East  End  work  had  convinced  me  that 
anaemia  was  the  besetting  fiend  of  East  End  girlhood, 
weakening  vitality  and  undermining  moral  responsibility  ; 
that  if  its  victims  could  be  tided  over  its  attacks  in  pure 
air,  bodily  and  mental,  they  would  have  a  better  chance 
of  becoming  decent  and  practical  human  beings.  As  I 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  short  changes  did  more 
harm  than  good,  I  arranged  my  Surrey  Home  to  take  in 
its  inmates  for  at  least  six  months,  and  generally  for  a 
year,  after  which  time  they  were,  if  possible,  to  be  placed 
in  country  situations.  During  their  stay  in  the  Home  they 
were  to  have  proper  medical  treatment,  and  the  stimulus 
of  light  but  regular  occupation,  as  necessary  as  the  right 
amount  of  rest.  With  this  in  view,  I  was  advised  to  start 
a  laundry.  Benevolent  neighbours  promised  their  custom  ; 
a  shed  was  converted — at  considerable  expense — into  a 
wash-house ;  the  season  was  spring-time  ;  the  '  copper,'  the 
tubs,  the  hopeful  blue  starch,  looked  full  of  promise  ;  and 
the  little  maids — so  I  said  to  myself — seemed  all  that  was 
now  wanting. 

They  came.  I  had  resolved  never  to  have  more  than  six 
at  a  time  ;  and  I  may  here  parenthetically  mention  that 
each  girl  cost  4s.  a  week  for  board  and  for  all  household 
expenses,  except  rent  and  matron's  wages  ;  and  that  a 
cottage  for  seven  people  came  to  £10  a  year,  and  the  doctors' 
bills  added  £5  to  the  annual  expenses.  They  came — I 
repeat — sufficiently  anaemic.  So  far  so  good ;  but  in  pro- 
viding hygienically  for  their  dormant  energies  I  had  not 
reckoned  on  the  sort  of  energies  they  would  actually  possess  ; 
I  had  merely  looked  upon  them  as  beings  that  must  be 
gently  roused,  and,  if  possible,  exhilarated  ;  and  it  was  im- 


AN  AMATEUR  PHILANTHROPIST  187 

possible  to  foresee  that  when,  after  endless  difficulties,  tin  y 
had  washed  the  first  batch  of  linen,  the  strange  powers  of 
anaemia  would  inspire  them  to  smear  the  clothes  with 
blacking.  This,  rather  frequently  rep<  ated,  soon  made  my 
scheme  impracticable.  The  matron  complained  that  she 
could  not  be  in  six  places  at  a  time  ;  each  girl  seemed  in- 
capable of  ever  remembering  what  she  had  learned  the  day 
before  ;  kind-hearted  ladies  were  waiting  for  their  table- 
cloths, and,  as  six  matrons  were  as  impossible  as  the  ubiquity 
of  one,  the  laundry  had  to  come  to  an  end.  Never  mind, 
we  said,  and  we  thought  of  all  the  axioms  suitable  to  the 
occasion  ;  the  wrongness  of  seeking  for  results  ;  the  analogy 
of  the  slow  seed  in  the  bosom  of  the  earth  ;  the  need  of 
patience,  and  what  not.  I  was  comforted,  and  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  cooking  and  housework  would  perhaps 
afford  better  training  than  the  wash-house. 

These  occupations  had  the  extra  advantage  of  allowing 
more  time  for  a  favourite  project  of  mine — the  awakening 
of  the  Whitechapel  mind  to  country  interests ;  to  the 
sights  and  sounds  of  the  woods  and  meadows  in  which  the 
girls  now  went  for  long  daily  walks.  I  discovered  also  that 
they  had  a  taste  for  learning  poetry  by  heart,  and  good 
retentive  powers — like  all  people,  including  children,  whose 
minds  contain  few  impressions.  It  seemed  a  good  plan 
to  associate  what  they  learned  with  their  new  experiences, 
and  I  tried  to  choose  simple  verses  descriptive  of  Nature, 
beginning  with  a  little  poem  of  Longfellow's  on  April.  I 
explained  each  stanza  carefully  as  I  went  along,  and  felt 
pleased  with  the  comparatively  bright  expression  of  their 
faces.  '  The  forest-glade  is  teeming  with  bright  forms  '  : 
so  ran  one  line.  '  Now,  tell  me  what  are  the  bright  forms 
you  see  every  day  in  the  woods  ?  '  I  asked,  in  my  most 
encouraging  voice,  my  heart  high  with  hope,  for  they  had 
now  been  three  months  in  the  country.  Amelia  Gibbs  put 
up  her  hand.     '  Worms,  if  you  please,  miss,'  she  replied, 


188  NEW  AND  OLD 

with  alacrity.  Perhaps  it  needed  this  answer  to  show  me 
that,  without  special  training,  Amelia  and  her  fellows  in- 
variably walk  with  their  eyes  on  the  ground,  unconscious 
of  the  sky  and  trees,  so  that,  unless  there  are  shops,  a  walk 
in  Surrey  is  all  one  with  a  walk  in  St.  George's-in-the-East. 
'  The  feathered  warblers  pipe  their  tuneful  note,'  I  con- 
tinued; 'well,'  (rather  less  hopefully),  'what  does  "feathered 
warblers  "  mean  ?  '  '  Squirrels,  miss,'  replied  Annie  de 
Courcy  (whose  Norman  blood  was  only  proved  by  her 
name) ;  and  though  her  response  was  far  from  the  truth, 
it  showed,  at  all  events,  that  she  had  once  noticed  a  squirrel. 

However,  I  saw  that  it  was  necessary  to  begin  on  a  new 
tack  ;  that  I  had  been  taking  my  normal  for  their  normal, 
allowing  a  margin  for  their  inferior  education.  I  had  to 
conclude  that  I  was  dealing  with  people  of  deficient  imagina- 
tion ;  people  who  did  not  wish  to  be  different,  and  saw  no 
reason  why  they  should  be  so  ;  who  were  wholly  lacking 
in  curiosity  for  anything  outside  their  restricted  experi- 
ence, and  understood  no  words  but  their  own  primitive 
terms.  How  could  they  take  any  interest  in  a  Nature  with 
which  they  had  not  the  remotest  connection  ?  The  only 
way  out  of  the  difficulty  seemed  to  lie  in  giving  them  some 
concrete  share  in  it.  With  the  help  of  a  simple  flower- 
book,  I  taught  them  a  little  botany  and  offered  a  prize  for 
the  best  collection  of  wild  flowers  ;  a  most  successful  experi- 
ment ;  Annie  de  Courcy  won,  and  we  put  poetry  on  the 
shelf. 

The  confusion  of  '  normals  '  has  a  more  serious  effect 
when  we  come  to  spiritual  training.  It  is  usually  con- 
sidered sufficient  to  speak  very  simply  on  religious  matters 
to  girls  of  the  class  in  question.  The  outcome  of  this  in  the 
pupils'  heads  is  a  hotch-potch  of  shibboleths,  whose  mean- 
ing they  never  think  of  asking.  Again  I  can  but  refer  to 
personal  experience  and  report  verbatim  a  lesson  on  the 
subject  of  goodness. 


AN  AMATEUR  PHILANTHROPIST  189 

Myself:    '  What  do  you  mean  by  "  goodness  "  ?  ' 

Amelia  :   '  The  grace  of  God,  miss.' 

Myself:   '  What  do  you  mean  by  the  grace  of  God  ?  ' 

Amelia  :   '  Saying  your  prayers,  miss.' 

Myself :   '  Well,  what  do  you  pray  for  ?  ' 

Amelia  :    '  To  forgive  others  their  sins,  miss.' 

Myself:  '  You  may  not  have  any  sins  to  forgive.  What 
do  you  pray  for  yourself  ?  ' 

Amelia  :    '  The  grace  of  God,  miss.' 

After  which  my  da  capo  question  was  followed  by  a  da 
capo  answer,  and  so  on  da  capo  to  '  the  grace  of  God  '  once 
more — a  cycle  of  phrases  totally  disconnected  from  exist- 
ence. I  felt  some  satisfaction  when,  a  month  later,  I  had 
made  them  dimly  understand  that  kindness  and  goodness 
have  something  to  do  with  one  another.  After  this, 
I  resolved  in  spiritual  matters  to  try  my  botanical  plan  of 
making  knowledge  tangible,  teaching  them  only  one  thing 
at  a  time,  and  repeating  it  incessantly  till  it  became,  as  it 
were,  a  mechanical  part  of  their  systems.  I  began  by 
taking  the  Beatitudes,  working  about  a  month  at  each  of 
them.  The  result  was  visible,  if  somewhat  confused.  I 
had  been  trying  to  bring  home  their  own  share  in  the  bless- 
ing on  the  pure  in  heart,  to  make  them  realise  that  they 
could  gain  it  by  avoiding  Whitechapel  temptations  and 
Whitechapel  behaviour,  and  I  had  endeavoured  to  explain 
that  horseplay  and  kindness  were  not  in  any  way  identical. 
They  were  supposed  to  write  out  all  that  they  remembered 
of  my  lesson,  and  I  cannot  do  better  than  subjoin  one  of 
their  papers,  that  of  the  Norman  Annie  de  Courcy.  At 
the  top  of  her  page  she  had  written,  '  Blessed  are  the  poor 
in  heart,'  and  here  is  the  essay  which  followed  : — 

'  This  means  that  we  are  to  turn  our  eyes  away  from  ugly 
sights  in  the  streets  such  as  murders  and  we  are  to  behave 
very  kind  to  our  young  men.     This  is  all  there  is  to  say.' 

Perhaps  nothing  can  show  more  clearly  the  foggy  chaos 


190  NEW  AND  OLD 

through  which  any  nascent  idea  has  to  grope  its  way  through 
their  minds  towards  birth.  Nelson  could  not  have  felt 
more  triumphant  than  I  did  when,  after  many  days,  Amelia 
Smith,  who  was  going  to  be  a  cook,  assured  me  that  '  thirst- 
ing for  righteousness  '  meant  taking  no  commission  from 
the  tradesmen. 

When  all,  or  a  good  deal,  has  been  said,  we  come  to  the 
practical  upshot.  For  no  one  has  a  right  to  talk  of  these 
matters  unless  he  has  some  solution,  however  sorry,  to 
offer.  My  own  conclusion  about  work  of  this  sort  among 
girls  may  discourage  the  optimist,  though  perhaps  it  will 
cheer  the  pessimist.  Results  are  certainly  to  be  had,  but 
results  disproportionate  to  the  labour.  Of  the  forty  girls 
who  stayed  in  my  Home,  about  one  in  every  ten  fulfilled 
the  purpose  she  was  there  for  and  settled  satisfactorily  in 
a  country  situation  ;  two  or  three  more  were  partially  suc- 
cessful and  seemed  to  be  improved  creatures  when  they 
drifted  back  to  London.  '  The  rest  is  silence.'  Of  course 
there  were  other  and  unseen  consequences.  An  eminent 
worker  once  told  me  that  it  was  enough  for  us  in  life  could 
we  make  one  human  being  happier,  and,  if  this  be  so,  a 
Home  might  easily  fulfil  this  ideal.  Much  more  than  this 
— anything,  indeed — may  be  effected  if  a  saint  or  a  genius 
arises  for  the  task  ;  one  endowed  with  the  spiritual  magnet- 
ism which  affects  all  whom  it  meets  ;  or  even  one  who  is 
specially  gifted  and  feels  a  vocation  for  the  enterprise. 
Given  these  faculties,  its  success  might  be  limitless  ;  but 
the  saints  of  to-day  are  as  rare  as  the  saints  of  old,  and  their 
work  is  bound  to  die  with  them.  The  average  person  has 
nothing  but  average  powers  with  which  to  fight  immense 
difficulties.  He  has  to  be  constantly  patching — and  patch- 
ing on  an  unknown  stuff.  That  is  the  real  crux.  A  girl 
comes  to  you,  say,  at  fifteen,  after  a  good  deal  of  experi- 
ence about  which  you  have  no  notion  ;  your  patches  may 
not  match  in  colour,  the  cloth  may  be  too  weak  to  hold 


CONVERSATION  IN  ENGLAND  AND  FRANCE   191 

them,  but  you  have  to  go  on,  like  one  sewing  in  the  dark. 
Perhaps  too  (and  this  may  be  the  reason  why  so  many 
homely  experiments  turn  into  big  institutions)  spacious  and 
numerous  rooms  are  almost  as  needful  as  saintliness  in 
dr.iling  with  beings  of  peculiar  tempers  and  uncivilised 
habits.  But  when  all  is  faced,  there  is  still  a  harvest  for 
the  reaper  ;  enough  to  send  him  cheerfully  on  his  way,  so 
long  as  he  has  courage  to  know  that  his  reaping  cannot  tally 
with  his  sowing. 

To  my  humble  thinking,  it  seems  better  and  more  prac- 
tical to  turn  our  attention  towards  the  new  material  which 
needs  no  patching;  to  take  little  children,  as  soon  after 
birth  as  possible,  at  any  rate  before  they  can  talk,  and 
remove  them  to  the  country.  You  are,  it  is  true,  con- 
fronted by  the  baffling  complications  and  mystery  of 
heredity  ;  but  you  know  what  you  are  doing  for  the  moment, 
and  you  are,  at  least,  giving  them  their  best  chance.  It 
may  be  self-indulgent  to  devote  ourselves  to  the  most 
hopeful  ventures,  and  yet  it  is  no  less  true  that  we  do  best 
what  we  do  happily.     (1900.) 


THE  ART  OF  CONVERSATION  IN 
ENGLAND  AND  FRANCE 

The  art  of  conversation  is  a  theme  that  is  never  stale.  So 
long  as  human  beings  possess  the  power  of  speech  it  must 
always  remain  a  popular  subject.  The  word  '  conversa- 
tion '  has  a  score  of  different  meanings  to  different  minds. 
To  some  it  signifies  talking  to  anybody  about  anything ; 
to  others,  only  a  patient  listener ;  to  others,  again,  the 
outpouring  of  their  feelings  or  opinions.  To  the  few — the 
happy  unhappy  few — good  conversation  is  as  necessary 
as  any  other  luxury  without  which  we  do  not  really  live 


192  NEW  AND  OLD 

happily.  There  are  certain  countries  as  well  as  persons  in 
which  this  need  is  especially  strong — countries,  as  well  as 
persons,  apparently  created  to  talk.  If,  as  a  modern  writer 
has  assured  us,  England  is  remarkable  for  the  gift  of  char- 
acter, and  Germany  for  that  of  music  and  of  metaphysics, 
it  may  be  said  that  France  alone  can  boast  a  genius  for  the 
arts  of  intercourse.  We  have  of  late  days  learned  only  too 
well,  at  Rennes  and  elsewhere,  that  the  talent  for  talk  is 
no  less  a  bane  than  a  blessing  to  the  French  people.  But 
the  qualities  which  mar  a  nation  politically  may  make  it 
socially  ;  and  the  faculty  for  eloquent  expression  on  any 
subject — for  glowing  interest,  quick  perception,  and  easy 
digression — can  be  traced  in  French  revolutions  and  French 
law-courts  as  easily  as  in  the  salons  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries. 

The  fact  is  that,  with  a  Frenchman,  talk — the  need  for 
immediate  expression  of  his  ideas — is  a  natural  and  almost 
irresistible  appetite,  and  if  he  cannot  satisfy  it  his  mind  is 
ill  at  ease.  He  speaks  admirably — by  grace  and  not  by 
works— and  whether  you  address  a  savant  or  the  waiter 
at  your  inn,  their  answers  are  equally  well  expressed,  and 
the  difference  lies  only  in  their  topics.  The  British  mind 
is  made  otherwise.  It  moves  slowly,  with  a  stately  caution 
— a  slowness  which,  in  itself,  sufficiently  explains  the  con- 
trast between  our  notions  of  society  and  those  of  France. 
The  Englishman  is  far  from  seeking,  or  finding,  relief  in 
utterance  ;  he  generally  feels  conversation  to  be  more  or 
less  of  an  effort.  He  reserves  it  for  dinner-time,  when,  if  he 
is  at  his  best,  he  is  rather  communicative,  and,  if  at  his 
worst,  he  knows  that  talking  is  wholesome  for  a  man  whilst 
he  dines. 

Another  quality  which  distinguishes  French  society 
(though  in  public  life  it  disappears  deplorably)  is  that  of 
gravity.  The  English  are  solemn,  but  the  French  are  more 
serious  than  they — more  serious  and  also  more  amused. 


CONVERSATION  IN  ENGLAND  AND  FRANCE    198 

The  power  of  being  amused,  never  natural  to  the  English, 
is  to  the  French  a  part  of  their  normal  life,  not  only  an 
occasional  distraction.  If  you  watch  a  party  of  ordinary 
Frenchmen  at  dinner  in  any  provincial  town  (Paris  is  a 
country  apart)  you  will  find  that  they  seldom  laugh,  yet 
are  always  cheerful ;  that  they  talk  much  with  a  grave 
animation,  and  are  too  much  entertained  by  what  passes 
around  them,  or  too  much  absorbed  by  the  subject  of  their 
discourse,  to  feel  any  need  of  making  points. 

A  party  of  Englishmen,  on  the  other  hand,  will  laugh 
oftcner,  scoring  more  good  stories  and  making  more  jokes, 
as  if  they  needed  this  to  rouse  them  from  a  kind  of  consti- 
tutional lethargy.  They  seem  to  be  constantly  trembling 
over  an  abyss  of  silence,  and  try  to  save  themselves  by  some 
sort  of  brilliance  or  effectiveness ;  and  this,  generally 
speaking,  represents  their  idea  of  good  conversation.  The 
truth  is  that  an  Englishman  is  permanently  afraid  of  being 
dull,  or  of  seeming  absurd,  and  consequently  is  bound  to 
become  elaborate  ;  whilst  a  Frenchman  has  no  such  fears, 
but  lets  himself  go  with  the  instinctive  confidence  of  the 
artist,  and  so  is  essentially  simple. 

Simplicity  is  a  quality  which  English  people  too  easily 
confound  with  commonplaceness,  instead  of  recognising  that 
the  one  is  opposed  to  the  other,  and  that  true  simplicity 
acts  as  a  preventive  against  the  vice  of  talking  for  talking's 
sake.  '  Good  conversation,'  says  a  charming  letter-writer 
of  recent  days,  '  is  the  talking  of  ordinary  matters  in  an 
extraordinary  way  '  ;  but  by  '  ordinary  '  she  does  not  mean 
trivial,  nor  does  she  mean  brilliant  by  '  extraordinary.' 
Nobody  better  understands  the  manner  of  saying  things 
than  the  French  people.  Their  middle-class  is  proverbial 
for  its  feats  of  housekeeping,  for  its  savoury  use  of  scraps 
and  bones  ;  and  much  the  same  gift  shows  itself  in  their 
conversation.  They  are  always  able  to  make  something 
out  of  nothing,  and  to  pass  gracefully  from  one  subject  to 

N 


194  NEW  AND  OLD 

another,  with  no  expense  to  themselves  or  any  one  else. 
Their  reputation  has  been  mainly  founded  on  their  wit,  and 
it  seems  superfluous  to  say  that  they  can  be  brilliant  when- 
ever they  wish  to.  Their  brilliance,  indeed,  has  been  almost 
too  much  dwelt  on,  to  the  exclusion  of  their  better  and, 
we  maintain,  more  characteristic  qualities :  naturally 
enough,  as  what  strikes  the  most  is  the  most  easily  under- 
stood. They  are  far  from  underrating  brilliance,  but 
they  give  it  its  right  place — a  secondary  one — and  use  it 
for  ornament. 

The  general  idea  of  the  old  French  salons  is  one  of  in- 
cessant intellectual  coruscation,   but  this  is  far  from   the 
truth.     There    certainly   were    occasions,    and    even    short 
periods,  when  wit  was  demanded  before  all  things,  wit  for 
wit's    sake,    a    studied    play    of   mind.     The   Hotel    Ram- 
bouillet,  early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  indulged  in  these 
fencing   matches    of   brains.     So,    a   few   years   later,    did 
Madame  de  Lambert's  salon,  which  was  called  the  Bureau 
of  Wit ;   or  sentimental  little  Madame  d'^pinay's,  a  hundred 
years  afterwards.     But  the  majority  were   '  bureaus  '  for 
ideas   rather  than  bons  mots ;   shabby  rooms,   very   often, 
where    men   and   women,   inspired   by   intellectual   ardour, 
really  made  for  the  truth.     They  did  so  nimbly  and  lightly, 
almost  gaily,  bridging  over  precipices  with  intuitions,  flash- 
ing forth  an  epigram  here  and  there,  where  it  could  give 
light,  but  always  cognizant  of  the  depths  below  them,  and 
caring  for  their  subjects  a  great  deal  more  than  for  them- 
selves.    We   are   all   familiar  with  Madame   du   Deffand's 
little  room  and  its  faded  red  curtains,  first  chosen  to  suit 
her  complexion,  then  serving  as  a  background  to  all  the 
great   men   of  her  day — poets,   playwrights,   philosophers, 
the    whole    encyclopaedic    world,    Fontenelle,    Marmontel, 
and    the    rest.      Or    round    the    corner,   at   the    house    of 
Mademoiselle    de    Lespinasse,    Condorcet    is    stirring     his 
audience   by  his   views    on   the  progress  of  Man  and  the 


CONVERSATION  IN  ENGLAND  AND  FRANCE   196 

perfectibility  of  Science.     Then  there  is  Madame  Neekcr's 
salon  a  little  farther  off,  where  the  metaphysics  of  thought 
and  feeling  are  freely  discussed,  and  where  we  again  m 
the  Encyclopaedists,  and  a  few  nen  besides. 

The  reasons  why  the  salon  has  never  flourished  in  England 
have  often  been  discussed  and  never  determined.  We  have 
already  glanced  at  the  chief  ones,  which  are  patent  enough. 
French  people  are  expansive  and  seek  each  other's  compa  i 
they  have,  as  we  said,  endless  energy  for  talking,  and  it 
acts  as  a  safety-valve  for  their  mercurial  temperaments; 
the  English  are  hospitable  but  not  sociable,  and,  apart 
from  their  inclination  for  silence,  they  think  expansiveness 
gushing.  Perhaps  this  is  partly  because  the  French  are  by 
nature  more  purely  intellectual,  more  taken  up  with  ideas. 
The  true  Briton  does  not  care  so  much  for  ideas  as  for  the 
working  of  them  ;  he  is  born  practical,  and,  though  that 
is  an  attribute  which  tells  in  good  government,  it  is  any- 
thing but  a  needful  element  in  society.  When  we  have 
had  salons  they  have  usually  existed  for  some  definite 
purpose  :  either  political,  like  that  at  Holland  House  which 
was  mainly  a  Whig  coterie,  or  religious,  like  Lady  Hunting- 
don's. As  a  rule  we  cannot  manage  a  conversational  circle, 
and  even  Dr.  Burney,  who  came  near  it,  had  as  much  music 
as  talk.  Miss  Berry  is  almost  the  only  instance  of  a  real 
salon  hostess  in  the  French  sense  of  the  word  ;  but  she 
had  been  formed  by  French  influences,  her  traditions  were 
moulded  by  them,  and  her  favourite  guest,  Horace  Walpole, 
had  also  been  the  favourite  guest  of  Madame  du  Deffand. 

Perhaps  the  fittest  equivalent  to  the  French  salon  is 
the  English  country-house.  Strawberry-hill  in  both  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  Lord  Lansdowne's 
Bowood,  and,  in  more  modern  days,  Lord  Houghton's 
Fryston  and  Lady  Ashburton's  Grange,  are  all  instances  of 
the  best  sort  of  English  Society.  In  the  life  of  the  country- 
house,  sport,  outdoor  exercise,  games  of  all  sorts  fill  up  the 


196  NEW  AND  OLD 

spaces  of  the  day,  and  intercourse  is  reserved  for  meal- 
times and  the  evening.  Englishmen  enjoy  doing  some- 
thing together  in  silence  ;  and  where  two  Frenchmen  would 
be  eagerly  conferring  on  some  interesting  topic,  our  country- 
men would  be  found  side  by  side,  with  fishing-rods,  guns, 
golf -sticks,  or  even  books  in  their  hands,  wrapped  in  a 
sympathetic  taciturnity. 

We  have  had  talkers  as  good  as  any  nation,  most  of  them 
distinguished  by  that  generous  English  humour  which  is 
our  own  especial  note.  There  are  Lamb  and  Sydney  Smith  ; 
for  eloquence,  Coleridge  ;  for  superficial  brilliance,  Horace 
Walpole  ;  as  well  as  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne,  with  quaint 
old  Selden  before  them,  and  a  score  of  others  besides.  But 
they  have  all  been  isolated  instances,  leaving  no  tradition 
behind  them.  Even  the  Lake  poets,  who  formed  them- 
selves into  a  circle,  were  a  circle  of  exceptions — a  ring  of 
stars  consorting  together  and  ruled  by  their  private  laws. 
In  France,  Society  has  been  much  more  like  medieval 
architecture  ;  the  names  of  the  masons  who  reared  the 
fabric  are  often  unknown  :  here  and  there  a  great  master 
stands  forth  in  person,  but  it  is  as  the  symbol  of  the  com- 
pany behind  him  who  go  on  from  generation  to  generation. 
Every  Frenchman  and  Frenchwoman  could,  and  still  can, 
uphold  the  tradition  of  good  talk  ;  the  names  of  the  best 
amongst  them  remain,  but  only  as  representatives  of  a 
national  gift,  shared,  in  lesser  degree,  by  many  obscure 
contemporaries. 

It  may  be  that  we  are  too  moral — we  should  say  too 
moralising — a  nation  to  graduate  in  the  arts  of  Society  ; 
an  institution  for  which  gracious  aesthetic  qualities  are 
all-important.  Our  virtues  are  those  that  make  for  govern- 
ment and  constitutional  dignity  ;  for  intimacy  also,  and 
for  a  concentrated  family-life,  in  which  silence  is  an  in- 
valuable element,  and  the  routine  of  the  day  furnishes  easy 
subjects    of    conversation.     And    yet   if    there    were    such 


JOSEPH  JOACHIM:    A   REMEMBRANCE     197 

a  person  as  a  fairy  godmother  left  in  the  world,  and  she  would 
give  us  three  wishes,  the  first  would  be  that  France  and  Eng- 
land might  for  a  time  exchange  their  talents,  or  at  any  rate 
some  part  of  them.  Magic,  however,  would  probably  cause 
many  unforeseen  complications — and  this  maybe  the  political 
reason  why  fairy  godmothers  were  abolished.     (1900.) 


JOSEPH  JOACHIM:    A   REMEMBRANCE1 

'  Coleridge  is  dead  !  '  Charles  Lamb  would  suddenly 
exclaim  in  the  midst  of  other  conversation,  during  the  weeks 
that  followed  the  poet's  death.  And  those  who  have  loved 
Joseph  Joachim  feel  the  need  of  repeating  such  words  to 
make  them  realise  that  he  has  gone.  When  men  have 
lived  the  life  of  art  or  goodness  belonging  more  or  less  to 
the  eternal  order  of  things,  it  is  more  difficult  to  grasp  their 
mortality.  For  those  who  care  for  beauty,  for  the  best  in 
music  and  in  life,  a  link  has  snapped  never  to  be  replaced. 
Music  is  not  dead,  cannot  die  ;  but  the  interpreter-genius 
who  revealed  it  in  its  purest  depths  has  passed  away. 

Those  who,  but  a  few  years  ago,  heard  him  still  at  lus 
strongest  (at  his  best  he  always  was)  know  the  utmost 
limit  of  human  achievement  in  art.  '  Whether  in  the  body, 
or  out  of  the  body,  I  cannot  tell,'  was  the  feeling  with  which 
one  always  came  away  from  hearing  him.  What  was  it 
that  made  his  playing  what  it  was  ?  Was  it  his  tone,  his 
phrasing,  the  might  and  grace  of  his  rhythm  ?  Was  it 
the  wonderful  union  of  passion  and  restraint  ?  It  was  all 
these,  it  was  something  more  than  these.  He  had  not 
drunk  at  the  spring  of  inspiration,  he  was  that  spring  him- 
self. It  was  this  fount  within  him  which  compelled  him, 
in  spite  of  his  vital  personality,  to  become  the  music  that 
he  played  ;  to  be,  in  turn,  Bach,  Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven, 

1  [From  The  Nation,  August  24,  1907.] 


198  NEW  AND  OLD 

Schubert,  Schumann,  Brahms.  Perhaps  it  is  the  heritage 
of  his  race  to  be  the  selfless  testifier  that  he  was.  '  If  people 
would  only  trust  the  music,'  he  once  said ;  '  they  too  often 
put  themselves  into  it.'  Once  when  Brahms  heard  Joachim 
play  again  after  an  interval,  '  I  felt,'  he  wrote,  '  that  there 
had  been  something  lacking  in  life.     Oh,  how  he  plays  !  ' 

This  particular  effect  of  his  music  was  due  not  only  to 
the  musician  ;  it  came  from  the  man.  If  he  stands  for  art 
he  also  stands  for  goodness  :  for  duty,  for  loyalty,  for 
obedience.  Not  for  virtue,  which  affects  a  man's  relation 
to  himself,  but  for  the  kinder,  sweeter  power  which  means 
his  bond  with  others  ;  the  '  human  charity  '  which  Beethoven 
said  was  '  the  only  superiority  that  counted.'  Sometimes 
one  was  even  tempted  to  wish  that  Joachim's  charity  did 
not  suffer  so  long  and  be  kind.  The  most  social  of  men,  he 
could  not  reject  anybody. 

Of  course,  like  all  interesting  people,  he  liked  interesting 
people  best,  and  men  who  had  made  their  mark  in  the  world 
inspired  him  with  respect  and  curiosity.  He  was  courtly 
without  being  a  courtier.  His  feeling  for  the  Emperor, 
for  Royalty,  was  a  sentiment — the  sentiment  that  Goethe 
had  at  Weimar.  Bismarck  was  one  of  the  persons  for 
intercourse  with  whom  he  had  cared  most,  and  for  the 
last  sixty  years  he  had  known  most  people  worth  knowing 
both  in  Germany  and  England.  In  the  fifties  he  had  played 
to  Goethe's  Bettina,  and  in  his  drawing-room  at  Berlin 
there  hung  a  water-colour  sketch  of  him  and  a  quartet  of 
that  day,  high-collared  in  swallow-tailed  coats,  playing  to  a 
little  old  lady,  Bettina  von  Arnim. 

But  the  great  friendships  of  his  life  were  those  for  Mendels- 
sohn, the  Schumanns  and  Brahms.  His  relations  with 
Schumann  began  when  he  was  very  young.  He  had  been 
playing  Beethoven's  Concerto,  and  he  and  Schumann  came 
out  together  from  the  hot,  crowded  concert-room  into  the 
star-lit  open.     '  Little  Master  Joachim,'   said   Schumann, 


JOSEPH  JOACHIM:   A  REMEMBRANCE      199 

looking  skywards,  '  do  you  think  that  star  knows  that  you 
have  just  played  the  Beethoven  Concerto  and  that  I  am 
sitting  by  you  here  ?  '  As  he  spoke  he  laid  his  hand  tenderly 
upon  the  boy's  knee.  The  incident  was  always  alive  to 
Joachim  as  if  it  had  been  yesterday.  Fifty  years  after- 
wards he  loved  to  tell  the  story,  in  his  vivid  way,  acting  the 
gesture,  recalling  the  tones  which  the  years  had  not  dulled 
for  him.  Joachim's  friendship  for  Brahms  was  one  of 
those  rare  comings-together  which  influence  the  history 
of  art,  like  the  friendship  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  of  Cole- 
ridge and  Wordsworth.  In  some  ways  the  meeting  of 
these  two  meant  more  than  the  conjunction  of  creators, 
for  without  Joachim  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  Brahms 
would  have  been  adequately  revealed  to  the  world.  Joachim 
immediately  recognised  in  him  a  sovereign  of  the  legitimate 
dynasty.  He  himself  had  no  mean  place  in  the  company 
of  great  composers,  but,  humbly  putting  his  creative  work 
aside,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  reverent  interpretation 
of  the  greater  masters,  more  especially  of  this  last  one, 
whom  the  world  as  yet  did  not  understand.  It  was  England 
that  he  found  most  responsive,  and  he  reaped  his  reward. 
After  forty-five  years,  his  last  pleasure  in  this  country  was 
to  lead  a  performance  of  all  Brahms's  chamber-music  and 
to  witness  its  established  success. 

The  difference  between  Joachim  and  other  artists  was  that 
intellectual  equals  such  as  these  did  not  spoil  him  for  the  less 
effectual  myrmidons.  But  with  all  his  kindness  it  would 
be  misleading  to  write  of  him  as  if  he  were  a  saintly  bishop, 
instead  of  the  most  human  of  human  beings.  He  did  not 
affect  tame  company  ;  he  loved  good  looks,  he  loved  quick 
wits  and  brilliance.  He  was  himself  witty.  His  humour 
had  a  sly  malice,  an  innocent  finesse,  and  he  did  not  object 
on  occasions  to  point  it  at  particular  persons.  Some  one 
had  been  criticising  Mr.  Z.,  a  fussy  man  of  his  acquaint- 
ance.    '  But  he  is  such  a  kind  friend,'  he  rejoined  ;    then, 


200  NEW  AND  OLD 

as  if  by  an  after-thought, — '  and  he  always  lets  me  know 
it.'  Another  time,  at  a  concert  of  Bach's  music,  he  was 
sitting  next  a  lady  of  high  rank  ;  they  were  looking  over 
the  score  together.  '  She  pointed  out  the  beauties  that 
were  there — and  some  beauties  that  were  not  there,'  he 
remarked  afterwards.  But  his  vision  of  their  weaknesses 
did  not  at  all  interfere  with  his  liking  either  for  Mr.  Z. 
or  the  lady.  His  satire  was  never  discourteous.  He  was 
asked  if  a  woman  of  note — a  reputed  liar — were  untruthful, 
as  was  supposed.  '  Let  us  call  it  romantic,'  he  answered ; 
'  she  was  a  very  attractive  person.' 

The  difficulty  in  defining  Joachim,  the  most  unparadoxical 
of  persons,  is  to  bring  home  to  those  who  did  not  know  him 
the  union  in  him  of  simplicity  and  subtlety,  of  dignity  and 
spontaneity,  of  a  warmth  that  thrilled  its  recipient  and  a 
dislike  of  extravagance  and  excess  ;  to  make  men  realise 
the  fulness  of  his  artist's  temperament,  together  with  the 
qualities  least  supposed  to  belong  to  an  artist.  Joachim's 
punctiliousness,  his  self-control,  his  good  manners,  his  good 
sense,  his  distaste  for  what  was  not  obvious,  his  still  greater 
distaste  for  what  was  lawless,  are  not  the  attributes  usually 
pertaining  to  the  popular  idea  of  a  genius. 

We  have  said  that  he  gave  up  composition.  It  was  not 
only  to  interpret  the  work  of  others  that  he  did  so.  It  was 
to  fulfil  his  mission  as  a  teacher.  Those  who  have  had  the 
memorable  good  fortune  to  watch  him  among  his  pupils 
at  his  Hochschule,  to  see  him  conduct  his  orchestra,  a  king 
whose  kingdom  was  youth  ;  those  who  have  witnessed  his 
patience  with  all  who  did  their  best,  his  wrath  with  what 
was  lazy  or  slovenly,  understand  how  he  spent  himself  for 
them.  Of  his  sovereign  kindness  to  young  musicians  there 
are  many  stories  to  tell.  He  loved  young  life  ;  he  exacted 
nothing  from  it.  '  Am  I  boring  you,  children  ?  '  he  asked 
some  girls  a  little  time  ago,  while  he  was  playing  Mozart. 
Not  only  among  his  scholars  was  Joachim  a  king.     There 


JOSEPH  JOACHIM  :   A  REMEMBRANCE     201 

is  a  picture  of  him  fresh  before  my  eyes,  when  once,  after  a 
festival  at  Bonn,  he  was  returning  from  a  Festfahrt  on 
the  Rhine.  As  he  stepped  off  the  boat  a  crowd  received 
him,  and  he  passed  up  to  the  town  between  two  files  of 
cheering  people — undergraduates,  tradesmen,  Herr  Doktors, 
English  pilgrims,  friends  of  all  sorts.  He  had  not  expected 
an  ovation  ;  he  was  moved  almost  to  tears  as  he  walked 
between  the  ranks  with  royal  simplicity  ;    and 

Blessings  and  prayers,  in  nobler  retinue 

Than  sceptred  king  or  laurelled  conqueror  knows, 

Followed  this  wondrous  potentate. 

Yet  the  most  enduring  image  of  him,  the  one  which  lives 
for  ever  in  our  hearts,  is  the  image  of  Joachim  the  player, 
standing  by  himself,  or  sitting  with  his  quartet,  his  Jovian 
head  straight  to  the  audience.  The  massive  hair,  the  watch- 
ful eyes,  the  wonderful  square,  supple  hands,  from  which 
virtue  went  forth,  complete  the  man.  He  is  surrounded 
by  an  atmosphere  of  concentration.  His  face  wears  a 
look  of  tension,  a  patient,  almost  troubled  expression. 
Then  the  mighty  bow  is  upraised,  the  Olympian  fiddle 
poised  against  the  shoulder,  and  the  first  attack  holds  us 
breathless.  The  tension  disappears  from  his  countenance ; 
it  becomes  calm  with  a  victorious  serenity,  with  a  rare 
intellectual  force.  There  is  no  exaltation,  no  throwing 
back  of  the  head,  no  common  sigh  of  emotion  or  excite- 
ment. But  the  eyes  are  transfigured  with  a  spiritual  light ; 
the  face  is  pervaded  by  an  intense  reverence. 

The  impression  belongs  to  many  places  :  to  the  Ducal 
Schloss  at  Meiningen  amidst  the  green  Thuringian  hills  ; 
to  the  hall  in  the  humble  Yorkshire  village  at  whose  festival, 
amongst  the  moors,  he  liked  to  play  ;  to  the  grim,  smoking 
towns  of  the  Black  Country  ;  most  familiarly  to  St.  James's 
Hall,  where  he  reigned  so  long. 

Once,  at  the  rehearsal  of  a  concert  in  that  little  York- 


202  NEW  AND  OLD 

shire  village,  he  was  sitting  deep  in  talk  with  a  friend.  The 
last  singer  had  finished  her  performance,  but  he  did  not 
perceive  it.  He  looked  up,  and  discovered  that  he  was 
waited  for.  '  It  is  my  turn  now ;  I  must  go,'  he  said,  con- 
cerned, almost  as  if  he  were  a  child  hastening  to  obey  his 
master's  call.  His  turn  has  come  now — the  call  found  him 
ready. 


THE  LETTERS   OF  A   SAINT1 

Saint  Catherine  of  Siena,  as  seen  in  her  Letters.  Translated 
and  edited,  with  introduction,  by  Vida  D.  Scudder. 
(Dent.     6s.  net.) 

Catherine  of  Siena  was  that  rare  creature,  a  practical 
mystic.  She  was  the  youngest  of  twenty-five  children  and 
never  quarrelled  with  any  of  her  brethren  ;  she  lived  in  a 
small  house  with  a  fretful  old  mother,  tending  her  to  the 
last,  when  no  one  else  in  the  family  would  be  burdened  ;  she 
nursed  the  most  difficult  cases  in  the  hospital ;  she  was  a 
forcible  diplomat  after  a  theocratic  fashion — more  of  a 
diplomat  than  a  stateswoman  ;  she  brought  Gregory  xi. 
back  from  Avignon,  and  reconciled  the  differences  between 
the  Romans  and  Urban  vi.  Perhaps  it  was  her  good  sense 
as  well  as  her  wisdom  that  gave  her  such  a  hold  upon  Sir 
John  Hawkwood,  the  English  free-lance  in  the  service  of 
the  Pope,  and  produced  in  him  such  tangible  results  as  his 
efforts  to  check  the  massacre  at  Cesena.  She  must  also 
have  had  a  personal  charm  which  only  her  presence  could 
convey.  There  is  no  more  striking  story  than  the  one  which 
she  tells  herself  (in  her  letter  to  Era  Raimondo  of  Capua) 
of  her  visit  to  the  prison  where  the  young  nobleman  Niccolo 
Tuldo  lay  awaiting  execution  because  he  had  spoken  critically 
of  the  Sienese  Government.  He  was  among  the  gayest  of 
worldlings,  and  was  plunged  in  abject  fear  at  the  thought  of 
death.  Before  Catherine  left  him  he  was  as  one  enamoured 
of  it,  and  he  said  that  '  it  would  seem  to  him  a  thousand 
years  '  before  he  arrived  at  the   scaffold.     He  stipulated 

1  [This  article  and  all  those  that  follow  it  were  contributed  to  the  Times 
Literary  Supplement.] 

203 


204  NEW  AND  OLD 

that  she  should  be  there,  and  she  knelt  with  him  at  the 
block,  putting  her  head  down  beside  his  till  he  died  joyously, 
saying  '  Catherine.' 

No  remote  hermit  saint  could  have  effected  this,  and 
Catherine  Benincasa,  as  her  present  biographer  so  well 
indicates,  was  first  and  foremost  a  woman  of  warm  sym- 
pathies. She  is  always  emphasising  the  secondary  import- 
ance of  penance  and  of  all  else  beside  the  power  of  loving. 
And  she  was  humble  with  that  humility  which  makes 
fellowship.  It  is  a  wasteful  fact  in  moral  economics  that 
the  people  who  least  possess  sin  are  always  most  convinced 
of  it.  Catherine  was  full  of  this  conviction.  She  wore  the 
roughest  clothes  ;  she  lived  on  lettuces  and  water — not, 
as  she  is  careful  to  tell  us,  from  any  asceticism,  but  because 
her  fasts  in  early  life  had  made  any  other  food  impossible 
to  her.  Yet  when  she  is  writing  to  a  fashionable  widow, 
she  speaks  of  herself  as  if  she  were  the  slave  of  vanity  and 
luxury.  And  this  was  all  because,  when  she  was  twelve 
years  old,  her  sister  had  dressed  her  up  in  a  grand  gown 
and  had  bleached  her  hair  according  to  the  mode  then 
prevailing.  She  never  quite  lost  her  misery  at  having 
allowed  this.  Such  feelings  may  seem  to  us  overstrained, 
but  they  gave  her  a  grip  over  the  morbid  and  depressed. 
Already,  when  she  was  six  years  old  (in  1353),  she  aimed  at 
living  like  the  Fathers  in  the  desert.  Her  father,  one  Benin- 
casa, was  a  poor  dyer,  and  it  was  a  long  time  before  he 
recognised  that  his  baby  was  inspired.  But  when  she  was 
sixteen  she  was  allowed  to  become  a  Dominican  tertiary — 
that  is,  a  devout  woman  living  in  her  own  home,  under 
religious  rule.  If  she  had  raptures  of  contemplation, 
strange  visions,  and  trances  in  which  some  of  her  letters 
were  written,  and  if  she  underwent  a  fictitious  mystical 
death,  she  also  faithfully  performed  the  lowliest  household 
tasks  and  ministered  to  plague-stricken  Siena.  Eleven 
grandchildren  did  old  Monna  Lapa  Benincasa  harbour  in 


THE  LETTERS  OF  A  SAINT  205 

her  house  while  the  epidemic  raged.  Eight  of  them  died  of 
the  pest,  tenderly  nursed  by  Catherine,  and  over  each,  as 
she  herself  buried  it,  '  This  one  at  least  I  shall  not  lose,'  she 
said.  '  Her  reputation  increased.  A  group  of  disciples 
gathered  round  her  .  .  .  and  she  became  known  as  a  peace- 
maker. At  the  same  time  .  .  .  her  unusual  mode  of  life 
excited  criticism  and  suspicion.'  She  was,  as  time  went 
on,  inspired  by  two  great  ideals  :  the  reform  of  the  Church, 
and  the  creation  of  a  great  Imperial  theocracy,  ruled  by  the 
Pope,  and  including  not  alone  Italy  but  Christendom — an 
organised  brotherhood  of  all  men.  To  bring  these  dreams 
to  pass  she  told  scathing  truths  in  high  places,  for  none 
had  a  keener  eye  or  deeper  regret  than  she  for  the  ecclesi- 
astical corruption  that  surrounded  her — the  eye  and  the 
regret  of  a  Savonarola,  as  Miss  Scudder  truly  shows.  For 
these  ends,  too,  she  went  to  Avignon,  the  accredited  ambas- 
sador of  the  rebel  Florentines,  charged  to  make  peace  with 
the  Pope.  She  failed,  but  she  brought  him  back  to  Rome 
— to  find  him  alienated  by  her  plain  speaking.  Tradition 
even  says  that  upon  his  deathbed  he  warned  the  bystanders 
against  her.  But  she  was  not  daunted.  His  successor, 
Urban  vi.,  who  set  about  the  work  of  reform,  but  with  a 
most  unwise  violence,  was  exhorted,  was  scolded  by  her, 
now  roughly,  now  with  feminine  grace — as  when  she  tried 
to  teach  him  tact  by  symbols,  and  sent  him  a  present  of 
bitter  oranges  gilded  outside  and  candied  within.  And  she 
died  in  the  midst  of  her  vain  attempt  to  heal  the  great  schism 
which  began  under  his  reign  when  Robert  of  Geneva  became 
anti-Pope. 

Mystics  are  not  good  letter-writers,  for  mystics  are  bound 
to  be  without  humour,  and  Catherine's  are  all  religious 
letters  full  of  obscure  and  jarring  medieval  imager}'.  But 
they  are  human  documents.  She  only  learned  to  write 
by  miracle  three  years  before  her  death,  and  until  then  she 
employed  young  aristocrats  as  secretaries.     Her  correspond- 


206  NEW  AND  OLD 

ence  was  wonderfully  varied.     '  She  wrote  to  prisoners  and 

outcasts ;  to    great    nobles    and    plain    business    men ;  to 

physicians,    lawyers,    soldiers    of   fortune ;    to    kings    and 

queens,  and  cardinals  and  popes ;  to   recluses  .  .  .  and  to 

men  and  women  of  the  world.'     To  the  dilatory  and  craven 

she  could  be  an  awful  correspondent,  as  when  she  advises 

the  sensitive  and  shrinking  Pope  Gregory  to  resign  the  Holy 

See  if  he  cannot  be  '  a  manly  man  ' ;  or  when  she  shows 

her  disappointment    in    her    peace-loving    confessor,    Fra 

Raimondo,  whom  she  sends  forth  as  a  matter  of  discipline 

on  a  dangerous  errand  to  the  French  King,  but  who  turns 

tail  when  he  reaches  Genoa,  at  the  first  sight  of  the  anti- 

Pope's  sails  on  the  sea.     To  her  niece,  too,  Eugenia,  a  nun, 

she  was  rather  a  formidable  aunt.     '  Be    as  savage  as  a 

hedgehog,'  she  writes  to  her  ;   '  go  to  confession  .  .  .  and 

when   thou   hast   received   thy    penance,  run  !  ' — a  drastic 

comment    on    current    morals.     But  to  '  Nanna,    a    little 

maid,  her   niece,    in   Florence,'  she   sends   a   letter  full  of 

tenderness.     '  A  heart  ought  to  be  like  a  lamp,'  she  says  ; 

'  thou  seest  that  a  lamp  is  wide  above  and  narrow  below, 

and  so  the  heart  is  made,  to  signify  that  we  ought  always 

to  keep    it    wide    above    through  holy  thoughts  and   holy 

imaginations.'     '  I  wish  you  to  have  the  cell  of  the  heart 

always,  and  always  to  carry  it  with  you,'    she  writes  to 

another   correspondent,  and   that   is    the  keynote    of    her 

teaching.     She  is  very  severe  upon  the  hermits  who  refuse 

to  come  when  summoned  to  Rome.     '  Apparently  God  is 

an  accepter  of  places,  and  is  found  only  in  woods,'  she 

exclaims,  with  that  irony  which  is  a  holy  form  of  humour. 

'  There  is  a  tree  of  love,  whose  pith  is  patience  and  good  will 

towards  one's  neighbour,'  is  another  saying  characteristic  of 

her.     And  so  is  this  brief  phrase, '  Nothing  happens  without 

mystery,'  with  which  any  account  of  her  might  well  end. 

Miss    Scudder   has   done    her    task    admirably,   both    as 
translator  and  as  editor.      Her  biographical  introduction, 


A  MKDIEVAL  GARNER  207 

containing  much  in  little,  full  of  thoughtful  charm  and  fine 
perception,  makes  us  wish  (or  more  work  from  her  hand. 
So  do  the  explanatory  notes  which  preface  each  letter  and 
exhibit  real  research  and  scholarship.  Her  pages  are 
quickened  by  occasional  touches  of  a  happy  humour  which 
makes  the  people  she  sketches  alive  to  us.  If  she  s<  nui  hues 
sees  more  in  these  letters  than  we  do,  that  is  only  because 
she  reads  Catherine  herself  into  them.  She  understands 
goodness — no  easy  matter.  '  Goodness,'  she  says,  '  despite 
a  curious  prejudice  to  the  contrary,  admits  more  variety 
in  type  than  wickedness,  and  produces  more  interesting 
characters.'     (1905.) 


A   MEDIEVAL  GARNER 

A  Medieval  Garner.  Human  Documents  from  the  four 
centuries  preceding  the  Reformation.  Selected,  translated, 
and  annotated  by  G.  G   Coulton.     (Constable.     21s.  net.) 

We  already  owe  happy  memories  to  Mr.  Coulton.  Those 
who  read  From  St.  Francis  to  Dante  arc  likely  to  remember 
him,  and  perhaps  the  first  thing  they  remember  will  be, 
not  only  his  wide  knowledge,  but  the  vivid  warmth  of  his 
learning.  It  is  characteristic  of  him  that  he  has  got  the 
words  '  Human  Documents  '  into  his  title-page,  for  human 
he  is  before  all  else,  and  that  is  the  quality  which  distin- 
guishes his  work  from  that  of  most  other  medievalists. 
'  The  records  here  printed,'  his  preface  tells  us,  '  represent 
thirty  years'  study  among  all  kinds  of  medieval  writings. 
.  .  .  They  treat  of  clergy  and  laity,  saints  and  sinners, 
spiritual  experiences,  love,  battles,  pageants,  and  occa- 
sionally the  small  things  of  everyday  life.'  Most  of  them 
are  translated,  and  for  the  first  time,  from  often  *  inacces- 
sible volumes '  and  from  six  different  languages.  The 
result  is  a  living  picture  of  those  centuries  of  strange  and 


208  NEW  AND  OLD 

coloured  medley  which  we  call  the  Middle  Ages — of  the 
generations  which  stretched  between  the  day  of  St.  Louis 
and  that  of  Luther ;  and  the  delightful  illustrations  here 
given  us  make  no  small  part  of  our  enjoyment.  At  Mr. 
Coulton's  word,  the  stagnant  sea  of  monkish  chronicles  gives 
up  its  dead,  and  Jacques  de  Vitry,  Vincent  de  Beauvais, 
Godefroid  de  Bouillon,  Caesarius  of  Heisterbach,  Petrus 
Cantor,  Christina  von  Stommeln,  Peter  of  Sweden,  Ulrich 
von  Lichtenstein  take  their  place  beside  the  better-known 
names  of  St.  Bernard  and  St.  Bonaventura,  Froissart,  and 
Walther  von  der  Vogelweide. 

It  was  a  time  of  strong  contrasts  :  of  violent  sin  and 
violent  goodness  ;  of  ecclesiastical  majesty  and  monastic 
puerility  ;  of  profound  learning  and  crass  stupidity  ;  of 
infantine  gaiety  and  sudden  tragedy  ;  of  flashing  fortunes 
and  swift  dooms — crowns  and  conquest  on  the  one  hand, 
battle  and  murder  and  sudden  death  on  the  other.  And 
over  all,  good  and  bad  alike,  there  shines  the  light  of  early 
morning  and  the  naivete  of  childhood.  '  So  it  was  as 
though  the  very  world  had  shaken  herself  and  cast  off  her 
old  age,  and  were  clothing  herself  everywhere  in  a  white 
garment  of  churches  ' — thus  wrote  the  monk  Ralph  Glaber, 
who  died  at  Cluny  about  1044.  There  is  a  kind  of  innocence 
about  the  very  sinners  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  and  the  angular  gaucherie  of  their  woodcuts 
transmits  itself  even  to  their  crimes.  Many  of  their  problems, 
indeed,  arose  from  the  fact  that  this  same  childlike  candour 
was  allied  to  the  unworn  forces  of  full  manhood ;  many 
others  from  the  terrible  intensity  of  their  literalness,  from 
the  way  in  which,  if  the  paradox  be  allowed  us,  they  applied 
their  imagination  to  that  literalness  until  they  turned  it 
into  remorseless  cruelty.  Logic  is  an  appalling  weapon 
in  the  hands  of  crude  conscience.  Ste.  Douceline,  who 
never  took  off  a  rough  shirt  of  pig-skin,  pressed  into  her 
flesh  by  a  coat  of  mail,  and  whose  life  was  one  long  chapter 


A  MEDIEVAL  GARNER  209 

of  charity  and  pious  ministration,  thought  nothing  of 
beating  black  and  bine  a  little  girl  of  seven  who  had  dared 
to  raise  her  eyes  to  a  man's  face  ;  and  this  did  not  mean 
that  she  was  mure  merciless  than  we  are,  but  only  that  she 
had  a  clear  material  vision  of  damnation  and  knew  that  a 
birch-rod  was  better  than  the  prongs  and  pitchforks  to 
come.  The  strength  and  the  weakness  of  her  contemporaries 
was  that  heaven  and  hell  were  all  about  them,  and  this 
vivid  presence  of  bliss  and  torment  accounts  for  many 
apparent  incongruities.  If  it  gave  rise  to  floggings,  it  also 
caused  unexpected  indulgence.  When  a  monk  who  dis- 
believed in  Transubstantiation  confessed  his  doubts  to  St. 
Bernard  and  remained  unconvinced  by  the  saint's  argu- 
ments, instead  of  applying  the  rod  of  discipline,  his  master 
only  answered  :  '  What !  a  monk  of  mine  go  down  to  hell  ? 
God  forbid !  If  thou  hast  no  faith  of  thine  own,  yet  in  virtue 
of  thine  obedience  I  bid  thee  go  take  the  Communion  with  my 
faith.'  The  monk  obeyed,  and, '  straightway  enlightened  by 
the  holy  Father's  merit,  he  received  a  faith  in  the  sacra- 
ments which  he  kept  unspotted  even  to  the  day  of  his  death.' 
St.  Bernard's  horror  of  hell,  the  burning  positiveness  of  his 
belief,  wrought  what  we  should  now  pronounce  to  be  a  cure 
by  suggestion — what  in  less  clinical  days  men  simply  called 
a  miracle. 

The  Host  was  often  the  centre  of  their  wonder-tales,  of 
some  of  their  divinest  puerilities.  St.  Francis  himself 
might  have  left  us  Caesarius  of  Heisterbach's  story  of  the 
bees  : 

It  is  somewhat  pitiful  that  we  men,  for  whose  salvation  this 
sacrament  was  instituted,  should  be  so  lukewarm  about  it,  while 
brute  beasts,  worms,  and  reptiles  recognize  in  it  their  Creator. 
...  A  certain  woman  kept  many  bees,  which  throve  not,  but 
died  in  great  numbers ;  and,  as  she  sought  everywhere  for  a 
remedy,  it  was  told  her  that  if  she  placed  the  Lord's  Body 
among  them,  this  plague  would  soon  cease.     She  therefore  went 

o 


210  NEW  AND  OLD 

to  church  and,  making  as  though  she  would  communicate,  took 
the  Lord's  Body,  which  she  took  from  her  mouth  as  soon  as  the 
priest  had  departed,  and  laid  it  in  one  of  her  hives.  Mark  the 
marvellous  power  of  God  !  These  little  worms,  recognizing  the 
might  of  their  Creator,  built  for  their  sweetest  Guest,  out  of 
their  sweetest  honeycombs,  a  tiny  chapel  of  marvellous  work- 
manship, wherein  they  set  up  an  altar  of  the  same  material  and 
laid  thereon  this  most  holy  Body ;  and  God  blessed  their 
labours.  In  process  of  time  the  woman  opened  this  hive,  and 
was  aware  of  the  aforesaid  chapel;  whereupon  she  hastened 
and  confessed  to  the  priest  all  that  she  had  done  and  seen. 
Then  he  took  with  him  his  parishioners  and  came  to  the  hive, 
where  they  drove  away  the  bees  that  hovered  round  and  buzzed 
in  praise  of  their  Creator ;  and,  marvelling  at  the  little  chapel 
with  its  walls  and  windows,  roof  and  tower,  door  and  altar,  they 
brought  back  the  Lord's  Body  with  praise  and  glory  to  the 
church. 

It  seems  rather  arbitrary  after  this  that  another  woman — 
Hartdyfa  of  Cochem — should  have  tried  the  same  means 
to  improve  her  cabbages,  and  in  consequence  have  been 
made  a  demoniac  for  life,  although  her  cabbages  duly  grew 
and  flourished.  Whatever  their  reasoning  powers,  reason 
was  not  the  strong  point  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  or,  rather, 
again  like  children,  they  kept  their  reason  apart  from  their 
imagination  and  let  these  two  powers  run  on  parallel  lines 
which  never  met. 

The  simplicity  which  solved  so  many  of  their  mental 
problems  greatly  complicated  their  daily  life.  It  was 
riddled  with  superstitions,  weighed  down  by  omens  and 
shibboleths.  Sometimes  they  added  sweetness  to  exist- 
ence ;  as  when  St.  Bernard  '  rode  abroad  in  the  morning.' 
For  when  he  saw  boys  keeping  their  flocks  in  the  fields,  he 
would  say  to  his  monks,  '  Let  us  salute  these  boys,  that  they 
may  answer  to  bless  us,'  and  then,  '  armed  with  the  prayers 
of  the  innocent,'  he  travelled  on,  feeling  that  good  luck 
attended  him.     Sometimes  they  added  terror.     There  were 


A  MEDIEVAL  GARNKR  21 1 

savage  curses  from  the  pulpit — sickening  rumours  of  the 
doom  that  befell  such  as  misused  the  Host  or  the  Chrism; 
or  '  prepared  a  table  with  three  knives  for  the  service  of 
the  fairies,  that  they  may  predestinate  good  to  those  born 
in  the  house  '  ;   or  '  believed  that  good  or  evil  came  to  them 
from  the  croak  of  a  jackdaw  or  raven,  or  from  meeting  a 
priest,  or  any  animal  whatsoever.'     Unreadable,  too,  is  the 
fate  that  overtook  the  unfortunate  villain  who  once  played 
at  hazard  in  the  church  porch  below  the  Virgin's  statue, 
and,  having  lost  his  game,  broke  her  image.    The  heavenly 
powers   were   not   often   Christian   in   their   conduct.     Yet 
even  the  current  cruelty,   the  barbarity  of  the  medieval 
imagination,  had  its  good  side.     Men  were  not  stalked  by 
fear  in  those  days,  as  they  are  now.     Pain  and  death  took 
their  proper  place  among  the  common  risks  of  every  day, 
and  even  torture  and  punishment  accustomed  the  world 
to  the  thought  of  the  great  central  facts  of  being.     Life, 
we  repeat,  was  full  of  contrast,  and  so  it  was  full  of  interest 
and  of  poetry ;    of  enchanting  detail,  too,  for  the  men  of 
those  times  were  fresh  in  observation  and  expression,  and 
blessed  with  a  vigorous  joy  of  life.     Their  existence  was 
not  unlike  one  of  the  pages  of  their  missals — clear  black 
and  white  type  in  the  middle,  and  now  and  then  a  splash 
of  red  and  gold  ;    with  a  border  of  infinite  fane}'-,  rich  in 
birds  and  beasts  and  flowers  and  goblins  ;    here  a  pitcher 
or  a  spade,  there,  next   to    emblazoned  matter-of-fact,  an 
angel's  head  or  mystic  emblem. 

We  are  constantly  reminded  of  St.  Francis,  of  Giotto,  of 
Chaucer,  of  Boccaccio,  as  we  turn  Mr.  Coulton's  pages  ;  of 
the  literature  of  later  days,  too— the  satires  of  the  Renais- 
sance and  the  Reformation ;  for  the  stories  and  jokes 
against  the  monks  were  much  the  same  in  the  thirteenth 
century  as  those  of  Erasmus  and  Ulrich  von  Hutten.  And 
what  wonder  when,  apart  from  immorality  and  gluttony, 
the  clergy  had  to  be  reproved  for  such  pastimes  as  dropping 


212  NEW  AND  OLD 

tallow  on  chose  below  them  during  sendee-time  ;  or  when, 
at  a  solemn  council,  the  Archbishop  of  York,  who  was  jealous 
of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  sat  down  roughly  in  his 
lap,  then  struck  him  with  his  elbow,  the  whole  business 
ending  in  a  violent  scuffle  ?  It  was  at  any  rate  an  effective 
method  of  ending  an  ecclesiastical  dispute  ;  some  of  us  may 
even  prefer  it  to  more  modern  constitutional  methods. 
Many  are  the  types  of  clerks  and  of  others  contained  between 
these  two  covers.  Thin  priests  and  fat  friars,  crafty  jongleurs 
and  shrewd  peasants,  green-robed  ladies  of  exquisite  fidelity, 
ladies  in  red  mantles  lined  with  vair,  on  their  way  to  much- 
needed  confession,  visionary  nuns  emaciated  by  torments 
from  imaginary  devils,  knights  wasting  with  love  or  fed 
with  capon,  others  pure  enough  to  see  the  Holy  Grail, 
jostle  one  another  on  the  road — the  high  road  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Sometimes  we  find  an  unexpected  type,  like  the 
Countess  Yde,  the  mother  of  Godfrey  of  Bouillon — a  mother 
a  la  Rousseau.  She  was  so  angry  when  an  attendant 
allowed  her  hungry  child  to  be  nursed  by  one  of  her  ladies 
while  she  herself  was  absent  at  Mass  that 

All  her  heart  shook  ;  for  the  pain  that  she  had,  she  fell  upon 
a  seat.  .  .  .  Swiftly  she  flew,  all  trembling  with  rage,  and 
caught  her  child  under  the  arras :  the  child  of  tender  flesh,  she 
caught  him  in  her  hands,  her  face  was  black  as  a  coal  with  the 
wrath  that  seethed  within.  .  .  .  There  on  a  mighty  table  she 
bade  them  spread  out  a  purple  quilt,  and  hold  the  child  :  there 
she  rolled  him  and  caught  him  by  the  shoulders,  that  he  delayed 
not  to  give  up  the  milk  which  he  had  sucked.  Yet  ever  after 
were  his  deeds  and  his  renown  the  less,  even  to  the  day  of  his 
death. 

Now  and  again  we  get  a  subtler  psychology,  from  the 
surprising  pen,  for  instance,  of  Ekkehard  Junior  (980- 
1060)  in  his  description  of  '  The  Three  Inseparables '  : 

I  will  tell  you  now  of  Notker,  Ratpert,  and  Tutilo,  since  they 
were  one  heart  and  soul,  and  formed  together  a  sort  of  trinity 


A  MEDIEVAL  GARNER  213 

in  unity.   .   .   .    Yet,  though  so  close  in    heart,  in    their  natures 

(as  it  often  happens)  they  were  most  diverse.     Notker  was  frail 

in  body,  though  not  in  mind,  a  stammerer  in  voice  but  not  in 

spirit;  lofty  in   divine  thoughts,  patient  in  adversity,  gentle  in 

everything,  strict  in  enforcing  the  discipline  of  our  convent,  yet 

somewhat  timid  in  sudden  and  unexpected  alarms,  except  in 

the  assaults  of  demons,  whom  he  always  withstood  manfully. 

He  was  most  assiduous  in  illuminating,  reading,  and  composing. 

.   .  .   But    Tutilo    was    widely   different.     He    was  strong   and 

supple  in  arm  and  limb  .  .   .  ready  of  speech,  clear  of  voice,  a 

delicate  carver  and  painter  ...  a  crafty  messenger,  to  run  far 

or   near  ...  he    had    a    natural    gift    of   ready   and     forcible 

expression  ...  so  that  the  Emperor  Charles  (the    Fat)  once 

said,  '  Devil  take  the  fellow  who  made  so  gifted  a  man  into  a 

monk  ! '     But  with  all  this  he    had   higher  gifts :  in  choir  he 

was  mighty,  and  in  secret  prayer  he  had  the  gift  of  tears.  .   .  . 

Ratpert,  again,  was  midway  between  the  other  two.      Master  of 

the    Schools    from    his    youth,    a    straightforward    and     kindly 

teacher,  he  was  somewhat  harsh  in  discipline,  more  loth  than 

all  the  other  Brethren  to  set  foot  without  the  cloister. 

Besides  official  documents  and  sermons — the  least  im- 
pressive part  of  the  book,  for  even  those  of  St.  Bernardino 
seem  to  us  of  to-day  neither  very  spiritual  nor  edifying — 
the  extracts  before  us  consist  mainly  of  monkish  records 
of  tales  of  war  and  tales  of  love.  Of  the  last-named  sort 
there  are  many,  and  one  of  the  most  striking  is  that  which 
chronicles  the  long  hardships  endured  by  a  certain  Ulrich 
in  the  service  of  his  lady — among  them,  before  he  had  ever 
spoken  to  her,  an  operation  for  a  hare-lip,  for  she  would  not 
look  upon  him  while  he  had  it.  'I  will  not  cut  thee  before 
the  month  of  May,'  said  the  surgeon — but  when  the  month 
of  May  came,  cut  him  he  did.  '  Masterlike  he  cut  me,  and 
manlike  I  bore  it  all,'  said  Ulrich.  If  the  accompanying 
woodcut  showing  an  operation  be  accurate,  then  Ulrich 
had  enough  to  bear ;  for  the  surgeon  is  jumping  in  the 
air,  so  as  to  come  down  with  more  force  upon  the  patient 


214  NEW  AND  OLD 

meekly  sitting  with  a  neat  bowl  ready  upon  his  knee.  Ulrich 
seems,  indeed,  to  have  had  a  morbid  taste  for  surgery,  for 
later  he  sent  his  finger  to  the  lady  as  a  love-token.  But  she 
still  resisted  his  blandishments,  deceiving  his  hopes  again  and 
again,  till,  tired  of  her  platonic  wiles,  he  transferred  his 
heart  to  some  one  else. 

And  if  among  the  stories  of  war  Froissart's  pages  stand 
out  far  beyond  the  others,  so  in  the  region  of  love  Walther 
von  der  Vogelweide  reigns  supreme.  He  seems  to  be  the 
only  man  among  the  many  medieval  writers  on  the  subject 
who  gets  beyond  romance  and  into  poetry.  The  vision  of 
the  ideal  love  he  never  found  has  a  touch  of  Dante,  some 
hundred  years  before  Dante  lived ;  and,  apart  from  love, 
his  poem  on  despondency  has  the  lyric  touch  so  rare  in  his 
day.  '  Hath  this  life  of  mine  been  but  a  dream,  or  is  it 
true  ?  '  so  sings  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide.  It  is  the 
question  that  we  ask  about  the  Middle  Ages,  as  we  close  Mr. 
Coulton's  volume.  The  best  part  of  them,  like  all  best 
dreams,  is  true — their  gaiety,  their  courage,  their  confidence, 
their  faith.  These  things  are  the  heritage  they  have  left  us. 
(1910.) 


QUEENS,  KNIGHTS,   AND  PAWNS 

Elizabeth  and  Mary  Stuart.     The  Beginning  of  the  Feud. 
By   Frank  A.  Mumbv.     (Constable.      10s.  6d.  net.) 

The  name  of  frailty  is  not  woman.  Or  should  we  say 
frailty  is  strength  ?  The  old,  new  story  of  Elizabeth  and 
Mary  Stuart  seems  to  prove  as  much.  Mary  Stuart  was 
frail,  but  she  knew  it,  and  her  astute  brain  used  her  frailty 
as  a  double-edged  tool— as  the  strongest  asset  she  possessed 
in  her  game  of  intrigue.  Elizabeth  was  not  frail ;  she 
regretted  it,  and  pretended  that  she  was.  And  this  pre- 
tended frailty  was,  likewise,  a  barbed  wire ;    it  was  the 


QUEENS,  KNIGHTS,  AND  PAWNS  215 

strongest  defensive  weapon  in  her  armoury.  By  dint  of 
it  she  organised  her  coquetries — her  military  manoeuvres 
of  flirtation.  By  dint  of  it  her  right  hand  could  receive 
regal  ermines  from  Prince  Eric  of  Sweden  while  her  left 
hand  was  held  out  to  the  Archduke  Charles,  who  '  had  a 
head  larger  than  that  of  the  Earl  of  Bedford,  and  was  unfit 
to  govern.'  By  dint  of  it  she  sailed,  not  near,  but  across 
the  wind,  with  Robert  Dudley,  Earl  of  Leicester,  and  was 
able  to  trample  underfoot  the  ugly  rumours  that  blasted 
her  reputation  at  home  and  abroad  after  the  backstairs 
tragedy  of  Amy  Robsart.  By  dint  of  it,  perhaps,  she  was 
able  to  dominate  the  qualms  of  her  own  strange  heart,  and 
turn  her  inclination  for  Leicester,  compounded  of  feeling 
and  of  vanity,  into  an  inspired  move  on  her  chessboard, 
a  means  of  delaying  the  vexed  question  of  succession.  She 
behaved  as  she  pleased. 

In  the  afternoon  (wrote  the  Spanish  Bishop  of  Quadra,  then 
in  England,  to  his  master  Philip  n.)  we  went  on  board  a  vessel 
.  .  .  and  she  (the  Queen),  Robert,  and  I  being  alone  on  the 
gallery,  they  began  joking,  which  she  likes  to  do  much  better 
than  talking  about  business.  They  went  so  far  with  their  jokes 
that  Lord  Robert  told  her  that,  if  she  liked,  I  could  be  the 
minister  to  perform  the  act  of  marriage,  and  she,  nothing  loath 
to  hear  it,  said  she  was  not  sure  whether  I  knew  enough 
English. 

Elizabeth,  like  most  great  players,  had  herself  invented 
her  game,  and,  like  most  great  women  players,  had  invented 
it  to  suit  her  own  character.  It  was  the  game  of  political 
mystification  ;  and  she  could  not  have  played  it  so  well 
had  not  her  rival,  Mary  Stuart,  lived  across  the  border  to 
stimulate  her.  It  was  an  age  of  leading  women — Catherine 
de'  Medici  ruled  in  France,  and  Margaret  of  Parma  in  the 
Netherlands.  It  is  the  more  remarkable  that  these  two 
Queens,  of  England  and  of  Scotland,  should  have  taken  up 
such  a  large  part  of  the  stage,  and  that  they  should  have 


216  NEW  AND  OLD 

held  it  for  so  long.  Women  were  never  so  powerful  as  then, 
when  they  were  most  personal ;  when  conflict  meant  no 
civic  rights  or  civic  arms,  but  a  duel  with  the  rapier  they 
wielded  with  such  consummate  skill — the  blade  of  feminine 
intuition.  And  these  two  have  fascinated  posterity  for 
more  than  three  hundred  years,  just  because  their  fight  was 
fought  with  common  instincts  upon  an  uncommon  scale. 
Mary  was  primitive  and  emotional ;  Elizabeth  was  primi- 
tive and  intellectual,  so  intellectual  that  her  natural  desires 
were  often  hidden.  But  her  vanity  was  perhaps  greater 
than  that  of  Mary,  or  else  she  had  more  need  of  it,  her  charm 
being  less.  '  She  took  M.  de  Montmorenci  with  her  right 
hand  and  M.  de  Vielleville  with  the  left,  and  they  walked 
in  the  private  orchard  for  more  than  a  full  hour,  her  Majesty 
speaking  with  them  most  sweetly  and  familiarly  in  French, 
as  readily  as  she  does  Italian,  Latin,  and  Greek,  all  which 
tongues  she  uses  at  pleasure,  and  in  so  loud  a  tone  as  to 
be  heard  by  everybody.'  Thus  writes  an  eye-witness. 
Elizabeth  wished  to  be  overheard,  Mary  did  not — a  signi- 
ficant point  of  variance.  '  Monsieur  l'Ambassador,'  said 
Mary,  '  .  .  .  I  like  not  to  have  so  many  witnesses  of  my 
passions  as  the  Queen  your  mistress  was  content  to  have, 
when  she  talked  with  M.  D'Oysel.'  Mary  lived  in  an 
atmosphere  of  secrecy.  Her  sleeping  eyelids  that  veil  her 
all-seeing  eyes  are  as  the  sentinels  of  mystery.  But  there 
arc  more  important  differences  between  the  two  protagonists. 
Of  the  three  Queens  then  most  prominent,  Mary  Stuart 
strove  for  herself  and  her  throne  by  means  of  her  relations 
with  men  ;  Catherine  de'  Medici  strove  for  her  dynasty — 
an  enlarged  self — by  means  of  plots  and  policies  ;  Elizabeth 
strove  for  herself  in  her  nation  without  distinguishing  the 
one  from  the  other,  and  she  did  so  by  means  of  deliberately 
choosing  the  right  Ministers  and  deliberately  discarding 
them.  Mary  failed,  and  lost  her  head,  because  she  could 
not  believe  in  anything  outside  personal  issues.     Catherine 


QUEENS,  KNIGHTS,  AND  PAWNS  217 

succeeded  for  thirty  years  and  then  failed  for  want  of  a 
large  outlook.  Elizabeth  succeeded  because,  almost  un- 
consciously, she  gripped  main  purposes.  Yet  Mary,  who 
put  her  faith  in  her  power  over  men,  has  not  been  cheated. 
She  has  kept  it ;  they  are  still  fascinated  against  their 
reason  ;  she  can  still  set  them  by  the  ears.  And  Elizabeth, 
too,  continues  to  achieve  what  she  made  for.  She  is  part, 
not  of  men's  hearts,  but  of  the  Empire — the  Imperial 
votaress  who  herself  has  passed  on  but  has  left  us  an  endur- 
ing heritage. 

Mary  has  one  great  claim  upon  posterity  which  Elizabeth 
does  not  possess.  The  Queen  of  England  did  not,  it  seems 
she  could  not,  suffer.  The  Queen  of  Scotland  could  and 
did.  She  had  a  heart,  even  though  it  was  a  bad  heart ; 
while  Elizabeth  seems  to  have  possessed  nothing  nearer 
to  one  than  a  warm  vanity.  There  was  little  love  in  her 
love-affairs.  '  She  more  resembled  Hippoly te  than  Phaedra,' 
as  Roger  Ascham  put  it,  in  a  style  which  pedantry  urged 
into  impropriety.  Her  inhumanity  to  women  knew  few 
bounds  ;  and  as  for  her  cruelty  towards  Catherine  Grey, 
who  was  guilty  of  marrying  without  her  knowledge  and  of 
owning  a  title  to  the  Crown,  it  repels  one  even  more  than  her 
conduct  towards  Mary,  especially  after  reading  Catherine's 
broken-spirited  letters  in  this  volume.  She  cut  off  people's 
hearts,  if  she  did  not  cut  off  their  heads.  Mary  Stuart's 
tears  were  burning  tears,  at  all  events  when  her  young 
French  husband  died.  '  You  have  comforted  by  your 
letters  the  most  afflicted  poor  woman  under  heaven,'  she 
wrote  sincerely;  and,  in  reading  her  letters  and  those  of 
Elizabeth  and  Elizabeth's  envoys,  a  conviction  is  thrust 
upon  us  that,  had  Elizabeth  been  kind,  the  course  of  history 
would  have  been  different.  Mary  was  susceptible,  and 
susceptibility  implies  an  inward  chord  which  answers, 
whether  to  good  or  to  evil.  When  Elizabeth  was  false,  so 
was  Mary.     And  she  understood  how  to  administer  her 


218  NEW  AND  OLD 

falsity  with  all  the  arts  of  feline  amenity.  '  The  Queen, 
your  mistress,  doth  say  that  I  am  young,  and  do  lack 
experience  ;  indeed  I  confess,  I  am  younger  than  she  is, 
and  do  want  experience  ;  but  I  have  age  enough  and  ex- 
perience to  use  myself  towards  my  friends  and  kinsfolk 
friendly  and  uprightly.'  And  '  If  your  mistress  will  use 
me  ...  as  her  natural  born  sister  or  daughter,'  could 
have  been  no  soothing  phrase  in  the  ears  of  the  elder  Queen. 
Yet,  in  spite  of  the  claw  in  the  velvet  glove,  Mary  could 
at  times  be  almost  childishly  direct,  as  Elizabeth  never 
could  be.  '  To  say  that  we  may  for  all  that  live  friends, 
we  may  say  and  promise  what  we  will,  but  it  will  pass  both 
our  powers,'  Mary  said  of  herself  and  her  rival.  It  is  always 
amazing  to  realise  the  odds  she  fought  against,  from 
Elizabeth's  inclement  refusal  to  grant  her  a  safe-conduct 
through  England  on  her  way  from  France  to  Scotland, 
onwards  through  the  years  of  craft  and  of  espionage  woven 
around  her  like  a  web,  as  the  letters  and  journeys  of  envoys 
to  Cecil  and  to  Leicester  testify.  And  untold  harm  was 
wrought  upon  her  ribald,  dashing  spirit  by  the  grim  rigours 
of  John  Knox — his  '  lenity  and  dulciness,'  as  he  called  them, 
in  his  nervousness  for  his  own  salvation.  '  He  knocked  so 
hastily  upon  her  heart  that  he  made  her  weep,'  wrote  Sir 
Thomas  Randolph  to  Cecil ;  but  '  there  be  of  that  sex,'  he 
added  cautiously,  '  those  who  will  do  that  as  well  for  anger 
as  for  grief.'  All  these  '  knockings  '  played  a  part  in  Mary's 
destiny,  and  pushed  her  into  the  excitement  of  intrigue 
and  of  passion.  Mr.  Mumby  is  right  to  dwell  upon  the  fact 
that  in  the  midst  of  the  immoral  French  Court  there  was 
no  breath  of  scandal  upon  her  name,  and  that  it  was  her 
infatuation  for  Darnley  that  first  woke  in  her  the  fire  that 
would  not  be  quenched.  That  infatuation  for  the  '  long,' 
arrogant  boy,  so  much  her  junior,  was  as  bewildering  to 
bystanders  as  was  that  of  Titania  for  Bottom.  '  She  is  now 
so  much  altered  from  what  she  lately  was  that  who  now 


VINCENT  DE  PAUL  219 

beholds  her  doth  not  think  her  the  same,'  wrote  Randolph 
to  Leicester.  '  Her  Majesty  is  laid  aside;  her  wits  not 
wh  it  they  were-  her  beauty  another  than  it  was.  .  .  .  The 
saying  is  that  surely  she  is  bewitched.' 

Politics,  from  which  Randolph  wished  to  retire  with  '  a 
good  old  widow,'  were  worth  while  then,  because  politics 
were  personal.  The  Constitution  was  a  growing  power 
and  it  weighed  as  a  lever  and  a  drag ;  but  the  real  vitality 
of  statecraft  lay  in  the  interplay  of  character  at  a  time  when 
life  was  still  fraught  with  primal  risks,  and  yet  men  had 
found  complete  self-expression  in  words  rich  and  fresh  i 
the  mint.  Mr.  Mumby  has  done  us  a  great  service.  He 
has  found  the  right  way  to  teach  history — when  no  historian 
of  genius  is  alive  ;  he  gives  it  to  us  in  a  series  of  admirably 
chosen  letters  from  records,  archives,  books  ;  he  weaves 
his  mass  of  material  with  signal  skill  into  a  sequent  narra- 
tive, and  he  connects  the  letters  by  lucid  paragraphs  of  his 
own.  This  is  all  we  get  of  himself  ;  yet,  without  acting- 
showman,  he  provides  a  clearer  sight  of  his  subject  than 
any  drum  or  trumpet  could  secure  us.     (1914.) 


VINCENT  DE   PAUL 

THE    MYSTERY  OF   THE    SAINT 

Vincent  de  Paul,  Priest  and  Philanthropist,  1576-1660. 
By  E.  K.  Sanders.     (Heath,  Cranton  and  Ouseley.      l6s.  net.) 

This  book  is  not  among  the  throng  of  nice  needless  books, 
half  historical,  half  personal,  which  daily  fill  the  bookseller's 
counter.  Vincent  de  Paul — the  religious,  the  practical 
genius  ;  the  organiser  who  saw  that  organisation  was  fruit- 
less without  charity,  and  charity  helpless  without  organisa- 
tion :    the  evoker  of  one  of  the  noblest  bands  of  missioners 


220  NEW  AND  OLD 

at  home  and  abroad  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  ;  the 
creator  of  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  of  homes  for  deserted  babies, 
of  the  hospital  for  the  galley-slaves  ;  the  philanthropist 
who  was  yet  a  mystic  living  in  a  land  of  prayer — has  long 
demanded  a  biographer  and,  by  a  rare  stroke  of  luck,  has 
found  the  right  one.  This  author  is  not  among  the  many 
subject-hunters  of  to-day,  the  soul-snatchers  rifling  graves 
of  persons  whose  gifts  might  fill  a  dozen  pages,  for  the  sake 
of  gossip  best  left  under  the  sod.  She  seems  to  the  casual 
reader  to  have  long  hoarded  her  subject  in  her  heart,  and 
to  have  found  in  herself  some  secret  response  to  St.  Vincent's 
spirit.  Miss  Sanders  possesses  the  gift  of  spiritual  insight, 
and  that  is  the  one  gift  demanded  by  her  theme — demanded, 
indeed,  by  the  whole  seventeenth  century,  that  age  of 
spiritual  dissatisfactions  and  satieties,  of  conversions,  of 
sinners  and  the  saints  whom  they  call  forth.  It  is  this 
spiritual  vitality  which  renders  the  seventeenth  century 
far  more  interesting  than  the  much-exploited  eighteenth, 
which  is  so  fundamentally  matter-of-fact  in  spite  of  its 
sensibilities,  so  easy  of  general  access  in  its  wit  and  its  love 
affairs  (without  anything  to  hide  even  its  scandals),  with 
Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  the  Encyclopaedists  to  guard  it 
instead  of  Pascal,  St.  Francois  de  Sales,  Bossuet,  Fenelon, 
St.  Vincent  de  Paul. 

This  volume,  from  first  to  last,  brings  us  straight  up 
against  that  most  perturbing  question,  '  What  is  a  saint  ?  ' 
— the  question  which,  whatever  the  inquirer's  creed,  is 
bound  to  make  him  ill  at  ease.  A  saint,  it  might  well  be 
answered,  is  an  enthusiast  for  goodness.  But  enthusiasm 
is  generally  thought  of  as  something  glowing  and  vague, 
the  greater  because  it  is  vague.  Not  so  was  it  in  the  eyes 
of  a  St.  Vincent.  To  him  enthusiasm  was  a  steadily  stoked 
furnace,  needing  both  an  altar  and  a  stoker  who  would 
never  for  a  moment  relax  Ins  efforts  but  feed  the  flames 
with    his    own    heart.      The    other    kind    of    enthusiasm 


VINCENT  DE  PAUL  221 

St.  Vincent  distrusted.  '  I  desire,'  he  wrote,  '  to  make  it 
my  practice  to  undertake  nothing  and  to  decide  nothing 
while  I  am  full  of  .  .  .  enthusiasm.9  But  his  life  expresses 
something  he  never  said — that  a  saint  is,  above  all,  one  who 
enjoys  ;  he  enjoys  holiness  as  the  artist  enjoys  beauty. 
Nothing,  after  all,  is  done  well,  still  less  transmitted,  without 
enjoyment ;  no  force  is  negative.  And  the  saint  is  no  mere 
renouncer,  no  ascetic,  save  as  a  means  to  an  end.  No 
practice  of  goodness  in  him  grows  stale  by  becoming  a 
habit.  A  discipline  it  may  be,  but  it  is  touched,  often 
burnt,  by  fire  from  heaven.  He  takes  such  delight  in 
Love  that  the  blows  he  suffers  in  its  service  are  as  nothing 
beside  his  inward  joys. 

My  daughters  [said  St.  Vincent  to  the  Sisters  of  Charity],  we 
are  each  like  a  block  of  stone  which  is  to  be  transformed  into  a 
statue.  What  must  the  sculptor  do  to  carry  out  his  design  ? 
First  of  all  he  must  take  the  hammer  and  chip  off  all  that  he 
does  not  need.  For  this  purpose  he  strikes  the  stone  so 
violently  that  if  you  were  watching  him  you  would  say  he 
intended  to  break  it  to  pieces.  Then,  when  he  has  got  rid  of 
the  rougher  parts,  he  takes  a  smaller  hammer,  and  afterwards  a 
chisel,  to  begin  the  face  with  all  the  features.  When  that  has 
taken  form  he  uses  other  and  finer  tools  to  bring  it  to  that 
perfection  which  he  has  intended  for  his  statue.  .  .  .  God 
treats  us  just  in  this  way. 

And  humility,  he  teaches,  is  the  basis  of  a  good  man's 
life.  He  must  be  humble  even  before  he  renounces : 
humility  may  even  oblige  him  to  renounce  renunciation. 
'  Humble  yourself  before  God,  recognising  that  you  are 
nothing  save  a  useless  tool  who  may  spoil  everything ' — 
such  was  his  counsel  to  a  '  Superior  '  with  regard  to  the 
priests  in  his  charge.  And  of  himself,  '  Tout  le  mal  qui 
se  fait  a  la  Mission,'  he  said,  '  dites  que  e'est  Vincent  qui 
le  fait.'  None  had  felt  more  sharply  the  piercing  thorns 
of  humility  or  so  deeply  knew  it  to  be  the  attitude  of  man 


222  NEW  AND  OLD 

towards  God,  not,  like  modesty,  the  attitude  of  man  towards 
man.  And  none  maintained  more  severely  the  sincerity 
that  this  attitude  demanded,  sustained,  as  Miss  Sanders 
writes,  '  by  no  hope  for  the  future,  only  by  the  continual 
withholding  of  intention,  by  a  most  faithful  yielding  of 
himself.'  Here  we  come  to  his  own  conception  of  the  life 
spiritual.  God's  servant  must  first  get  rid  of  personal 
desires  and  then  he  must  do  nothing — and  everything.  He 
must  wait  for  love  to  flood  in  ;  after  that  he  forswears  his 
heritage  if  he  finds  any  suffering  too  crushing  for  a  spirit 
thus  baptized.  It  was  because  he  believed  this  with  such 
terrible  intensity  that  he  was  able  to  live  so  many  lives, 
all  equally  harassed  and  full  of  suffering,  as  gladly  as  if 
they  were  lives  of  pleasure  ;  and  this  it  was  that  gave  his 
tender  unrelenting  austerity  such  authority  over  all  ranks, 
from  Queen  to  criminal ;  that  left  him,  storm-beaten  in 
mid-ocean,  as  tranquil  as  a  big  ship  in  port. 

This  truth,  Miss  Sanders  makes  one  feel,  must  be  grasped 
before  we  can  understand  St.  Vincent's  work,  and  in  order 
that  we  may  avoid  what  is,  she  tells  us,  the  prevalent  idea 
of  him— that  of  a  busy  philanthropist  absorbed  in  practical 
activities.  To  him  his  priesthood,  his  inward  being,  was 
paramount ;  his  deeds  were  but  its  fruit.  Another  fact 
emerges  clearly  from  her  pages,  that  when  St.  Vincent 
became  absorbed  in  the  crying  needs  of  the  poor  he  did 
not  stand  alone.  There  was  already  in  France  in  the  middle 
of  the  seventeenth  century  an  outburst  of  philanthropic 
and  religious  genius  like  that  of  art  two  hundred  years  before, 
or  of  poetry  in  Elizabethan  England.  Names  of  men  and 
sects  fill  the  stage.  There  were  Berulle,  the  founder  of  the 
Oratorians,  and  Olier,  the  initiator  of  the  Seminary  of  St. 
Sulpice  ;  there  was  the  Secret  Company  of  the  Blessed 
Sacrament  (the  Cabale  Devote) ;  there  were  St.  Francois 
de  Sales  and  Mme.  de  Chantal ;  before  all  there  was  Port 
Royal  with  its  St.  Cyran  and  its  Mere  Angelique,  its  Arnaulds, 


VINCENT  DE  PAUL  223 

its  converted  Pascal.  But  the  greatness  of  these  figures — 
at  least  of  such  as  were  prominently  practical — only  serves 
to  show  off  the  stature  of  the  man  who  stood  higher  than 
they  did.     They  make  his  life  more,  not  less,  wonderful. 

Vincent  de  Paul  was  born  in  1576  of  peasant  proprietors. 
His  father  sold  a  yoke  of  oxen  to  keep  him  at  college,  and 
he  was  brought  up  to  the  priesthood.  Five  years  after  his 
ordination  business  took  him  to  Marseilles,  and  on  his 
return  journey  he  was  taken  prisoner  by  Turkish  pirates, 
carried  to  Tunis,  sold  as  a  slave  to  an  alchemist,  and  later 
to  a  renegade  Savoyard,  who  again  turned  Christian  and 
liberated  him.  Vincent  went  back  to  France  in  1609,  and 
was  made  Almoner  to  the  widowed  and  debt-ridden  Reine 
Margot.  It  was  after  this  that  his  real  religious  life  began. 
He  lodged  with  Berulle  and  the  newly  founded  Oratorians, 
became  cure  of  Clichy,  and  a  year  later  was  sent,  sorely 
against  his  will,  to  be  tutor  to  the  children  of  the  aristo- 
cratic Gondi  family.  Yet  this  hated  appointment  it  was 
which  led  him  to  his  vocation.  Mme.  and  M.  de  Gondi 
were  the  first  people  to  fall  subject  to  the  power  of  the 
shabby  little  priest,  '  so  uncouth  of  aspect,  yet  possessed 
of  such  infinite  attraction,'  who,  when  his  duties  were  per- 
formed, retired  daily  to  monastic  seclusion.  Gradually 
he  grew  to  be  their  spiritual  guide  in  all  things.  The  state 
of  the  poor  throughout  that  century  in  a  France  devastated 
by  war  and  famine,  where  the  peasant  was  little  more  re- 
garded than  the  wild  beasts  in  the  forests,  defies  descrip- 
tion ;  and  the  sights  he  saw  among  the  peasants  of  the 
countryside  kindled  in  him  that  passion  of  charity  which 
henceforth  consumed  him.  With  the  help  of  the  rich  and 
fervent  Gondis  he  began  what  was  to  prove  the  work — 
the  great  work — of  his  lifetime.  In  1625,  when  he  was  near 
fifty,  was  founded  the  Congregation  of  Mission  Priests,  the 
evangelising  guardians  of  the  poor  and  oppressed ;  in 
Paris  to  start  with,  later  throughout  the  provinces,  finally 


224  NEW  AND  OLD 

among  the  slaves  of  Africa  and  the  negroes  of  Madagascar, 
in  Poland,  in  Ireland,  in  the  Hebrides,  among  the  galley- 
slaves  at  Marseilles  ;  wherever  they  went  suffering  torments 
from  plague,  disease,  climate,  hunger,  cold,  and  violence, 
and,  inspired  by  their  teacher,  shedding  their  lives  like 
worthless  garments.  Their  training  in  the  House  of  Saint 
Lazare  in  Paris  was  long  and  terribly  severe,  yet  most  of 
them  looked  back  to  it  as  the  most  precious  time  of  their 
lives.  No  less  stern  was  the  rule  of  the  companion  mission 
which,  in  1632,  followed  that  of  the  priests — the  Mission 
of  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  daughters  of  the  people,  vowed  to 
God,  yet  not  nuns ;  like  the  priests,  spreading  their  net- 
work over  France,  and  led  by  an  heroic  general.  This  was 
Mile.  Le  Gras,  who  was  the  St.  Clare  of  St.  Vincent's  exist- 
ence, and  died  only  just  before  him.  These  Sisters  were 
originally  started  as  a  supplement  to  the  '  Ladies  of  Charity,' 
the  grandes  dames  who  at  St.  Vincent's  call  undertook  the 
supervision  of  the  neglected  Hotel  Dieu,  and  whose  work, 
ardent  though  it  was,  suffered  from  the  ignorance  of  fashion. 
Yet  they  continued,  and  finally  assumed  the  care  of  the 
foundlings — needful  care,  since  hitherto  the  State  had  left 
this  charge  to  nurses,  who  had  deliberately  done  away 
with  four  hundred  babies  in  one  year.  Results  make  easy 
reading  for  posterity,  but  on  all  sides  St.  Vincent  was  beset 
by  obstacles  as  great  as  those  that  beset  St.  Paul.  His 
worst  enemies  were  those  of  his  own  household — not  sur- 
prising at  a  time  when  in  one  diocese  alone  seven  thousand 
priests,  drunk  or  immoral,  served  at  the  altar.  Gradually, 
as  his  gift  came  to  be  recognised,  he  was  able  to  insist 
on  harbouring  young  priests  before  their  ordination.  His 
seminaries  were  among  the  chief  agencies  of  clerical  reform. 
Of  public  life  he  had  little.  Miss  Sanders's  excellently 
lucid  account  of  the  Fronde,  that  dustiest  and  most  foolish 
of  civil  wars  ;  of  his  ascendancy  over  obstinate,  weak- 
willed,    good-natured    Anne    of    Austria,    who    made    him 


VINCENT  DE  PAUL  285 

member  of  her  Council  of  Conscience  ;  of  his  daring  in 
attempting  to  make  her  give  up  Mazarin  ;  of  his  failure 
and  of  Mazarin's  reign,  is  not  the  least  attractive  part  of 
her  study.  Admirable  also  are  her  chapters  discussing  his 
persecution  of  Port  Royal,  and  those  last  days  of  endurance 
and  fulfilment.  She  is  a  dignified  historian,  a  fine  guide, 
guiltless  of  the  craven  modern  fear  of  being  dull  ;  so  free 
of  self  and  so  sure  of  her  subject  that  she  is  safe  always  to 
be  interesting,  and  she  is  rich  in  deep  research  and  sound 
judgment.  Here  and  there  her  work  would  gain  by  focus- 
ing— in  the  case,  for  instance,  of  her  pictures  of  the  misery 
of  France,  which  give  the  impression  of  reiteration,  because 
they  recur  on  scattered  pages  instead  of  gaining  force  by 
union.  And  the  arresting  portrait  of  Cardinal  de  Retz  has 
not  quite  enough  relation  to  St.  Vincent  to  justify  its  pro- 
minent place.  But  she  never  really  loses  sight  of  her 
central  figure,  and  he  alone  it  is  who  concerns  us.  What 
was  it  that  gave  St.  Vincent  his  amazing  power  over  all 
sorts  and  conditions,  that  made  a  few  months  with  him  an 
abiding  force,  enabling  average  men  and  women  to  abandon 
their  lives  to  pain  and  weariness  ?  Partly  that  rare  union 
of  an  extraordinarily  loving  understanding  with  unflinch- 
ing truth,  and  with  the  searching  humanity  which  made 
him  treat  criminals  as  his  equals  and  tend  the  mad  and 
depraved  beneath  his  roof.  There  was  something  more — 
less  explicable.  One  day  Marthe  de  Vigean,  the  great 
Conde's  love,  the  triumphant  belle  of  Paris,  was  escorting 
him  downstairs.  '  Mademoiselle,'  he  said,  looking  in  her 
eyes,  '  you  were  not  intended  for  the  world.'  She  seemed  to 
pay  no  heed  to  his  words.  Within  three  years,  without  any 
outward  reason,  she  entered  the  Convent  of  the  Carmelites. 
We  are  brought  back  to  the  mystery  of  the  saint.  It  is 
in  vain  we  reason  with  our  feeling  of  discomfort  and  try  to 
prove  that  a  life  which  thwarts  nature  must  be  a  mistake, 
however  glorious  ;    or  explain  the  matter  by  telling  our- 

¥ 


226  NEW  AND  OLD 

selves  that  a  saint  is  a  moral  genius  as  abnormal  as  all 
geniuses.  We  cannot  evade  the  fact  that  men  like  St. 
Vincent  get  far  beyond  other  men  on  the  road  to  heaven, 
that  they  need  none  of  our  maps  to  direct  them.  But  we 
must  not  confuse  issues.  They  are  wrong  thinkers,  but 
their  conclusions  are  right  because  their  spirits  are  right, 
and  the  spirit  is  stronger  than  the  mind.  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul  solved  life's  problem  because  he  unknowingly  trans- 
cended his  own  short-sighted  notion  of  personal  salva- 
tion and  forgot  his  safety  in  the  good  of  others  ;  because 
he  performed  that  miracle  of  love  which  unites  all  saintly 
persons  from  the  holy  man  by  the  Indian  roadside  to  the 
apostles  and  heroes  of  Christianity.  Yet  we  must  not 
forget  that  the  saint's  ideal — limiting  as  it  does  the  mind 
of  God,  and  silencing  all  but  one  of  the  many  voices  in 
which  He  speaks — however  noble  for  the  individual,  would 
destroy  the  life  of  the  race  with  the  very  conditions  which 
make  it  possible  for  the  good  to  exist.  Only  when  the 
saint  embraces  thought,  and  the  thinker  dares  to  be  saintly 
— not  with  the  sentiment  of  reaction  and  the  '  all  or  nothing  ' 
faith  of  the  sceptic — will  the  Kingdom  come  upon  the  earth. 
(1913.) 


A  HEROINE   OF  CORNEILLE 

La  Grande  Mademoiselle.  16*27-1652.  By  Arvede  Barine  ; 
translated  by  Helen  E.  Meyer.  (G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 
12s.  6d.) 

To  read  a  good  memoir  is  to  wonder  why  anybody  should 
ever  read  a  novel.  A  history  such  as  this  one  of  the  Great 
Mademoiselle  is  more  amusing,  less  jarring,  less  bewildering 
than  daily  existence.  The  reader  is  not  troubled  by  the 
improbabilities  created  by  a  second-rate  imagination,  and 
the  central  figures  stand  out  in  the  fitting  framework  of 


A  HEROINE  OF  CORNEILLE  227 

time  and  circumstance.  Madame  Arv£de  Barine  has  the 
gift  of  making  the  portrait  predominate,  however  alluring 
the  golden  frame,  and  she  could  have  chosen  no  more 
masterful  a  figure  than  Anne-Marie-Louise  d'Orleans.  She 
was  the  last  of  the  Renaissance  women,  those  singular 
mixtures  of  romance  and  matter-of-fact.  She  was  the 
first  of  the  women  a  la  Corneille,  the  women  in  the  Grand 
Style,  so  like  the  buildings  of  the  period  with  their  pseudo- 
classicism,  and  their  friezes  heavily  carved  with  helmets, 
wreaths,  and  cupids.  Mademoiselle's  personality  pre- 
sented strong  contrasts.  She  was  grand,  she  was  absurd, 
she  was  quixotic,  she  was  prudent ;  her  heroism  and  her 
frivolity  touched  each  other  closely,  and  when  most  of  a 
hero  she  could  suddenly  fall  and  become  the  most  puerile  of 
women.  For  moments  she  belonged  to  Shakespeare,  for 
hours  to  Moliere.  She  was,  indeed,  fated  to  be  preposterous. 
The  result  was  natural  in  the  case  of  a  woman  who  made 
imaginary  lovers  out  of  an  emperor,  a  king,  and  a  prince, 
not  one  of  whom  ever  intended  to  marry  her.  Her  strength 
and  her  weakness  lay  perhaps  in  the  fact  that  she  was  that 
exceptional  creature,  an  ambitious  woman — ambitious  for 
her  own  sake,  not  for  that  of  another  person — an  attribute 
which  led  her  into  strange  places. 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  her  without,  in  some 
measure,  understanding  her  time — a  time  presenting  as 
many  contrasts  as  the  characters  of  its  women.  Never  was 
the  divine  right  of  kings  more  unquestioningly  recognised 
than  under  Louis  xiii.  and  his  son.  Never  had  the  Court 
greater  power  than  at  this  moment,  when  each  peer  and 
princeling  had  a  minor  divine  right  of  his  own.  Nor  had 
there  ever  stretched  a  wider  gulf  between  Court  and  city, 
King  and  people.  The  populace  simply  did  not  count. 
Yet,  as  Anne  of  Austria  left  her  palace,  the  fishwomen  were 
allowed  to  press  round  her  and  ply  her  with  crude  comments 
on  her  supposed  relations  with  Mazarin.     The  luxury  in 


228  NEW  AND  OLD 

royal  trappings  was  excessive ;  nevertheless,  when  the 
King  invited  guests  to  stay  with  him  he  only  offered  them 
empty  rooms,  and  they  had  to  bring  their  own  furniture 
and  bedding.  Barbarisms  were  practised  in  the  streets  of 
Paris,  but  not  far  off  there  existed  the  first  of  the  salons — 
in  the  famous  Hotel  Rambouillet,  which  was  to  do  so  much 
in  shaping  modern  existence.  Of  Madame  de  Rambouillet, 
its  foundress,  of  the  wits  and  beauties  and  pedants  who 
gathered  there,  of  the  Precieuses  whose  famous  affectations 
did  so  much  to  develop  language  and  to  civilise  manners, 
Madame  Arvede  Barine  gives  a  vivid  and  delicate  picture. 
Here  Comeille  read  the  Cid  as  the  work  of  an  unknown 
author,  and  was  advised  by  Voiture  to  put  it  away  in  a 
drawer.  Letters  from  the  absent  were  discussed  as  if  they 
were  masterpieces,  and  scholars  '  writhed  '  in  pain  when 
they  heard  a  mistake  made  in  grammar.  But  the  real 
result  of  the  '  Blue  Salon  '  was  a  solid  one.  It  changed 
the  social  code  ;  it  enabled  authors  to  meet  noblemen  on 
equal  terms,  and  raised  the  position  of  literature.  More 
than  this,  it  established  the  position  of  women.  For  it 
was  the  Hotel  Rambouillet  that  produced  the  political 
lady  ;  that  brought  forth  the  band  of  practical  beauties 
by  whom  the  second  Fronde,  the  '  Ladies'  Fronde,'  was 
organised.  The  sword-like  tongues  of  Madame  de  Longue- 
ville,  Madame  de  Chevreuse,  Madame  de  Montbazon  and 
their  like  were  potent  weapons.  So  determined  were  these 
Frondistes  that  two  of  them  stationed  themselves  in  the 
doorway  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  till  their  gallant  allies,  the 
councillors  inside  it,  took  them  in  and  arranged  a  luxurious 
Salon  for  them  there.  In  the  Louvre,  also,  a  woman,  or 
rather  the  relation  between  a  woman  and  a  man,  was  decid- 
ing the  national  destiny.  First  Richelieu  had  a  love  passage 
with  the  Regent,  Anne  of  Austria ;  then  Mazarin  took 
possession  of  her  heart  and  ruled  her  and  France.  She 
had  a  secret  corridor  made  between  their  rooms,  and  he 


A  HEROINE  OF  CORNEILLE  229 

appeared  everywhere  with  her,  remaining  with  his  hat  on 
in  her  presence.  These  tyrant  cardinals  live  before  us  : 
Richelieu,  superb  and  hard  ;  Mazarin,  the  crafty,  soft- 
spoken,  stony  Italian.  By  their  side  move  many  other 
figures  :  that  of  La  Rochefoucauld,  gathering  the  experi- 
ences from  which  he  wrote  his  maxims  ;  of  Retz  (afterwards 
a  cardinal),  the  leader  of  the  people's  Fronde,  '  the  trickster 
of  the  pulpit  and  of  the  slums  '  ;  of  the  romantic  Cinq- 
Mars,  who  lost  his  head  for  the  sake  of  a  conspiracy  ;  of 
Conde,  the  great  Conde  in  battle,  '  the  awkward  and  insig- 
nificant Conde  of  civil  life,'  with  his  ungoverned  nerves 
and  his  '  invincible  immoderation.'  Hard  by  all  this  gay 
society,  and  more  or  less  the  result  of  it,  was  growing  up 
the  movement  for  religious  reform  which  developed  into 
Jansenism  and  found  refuge  in  Port  Royal.  St.  Cyran,  the 
stern  father  of  that  fraternity,  was  already  in  the  field  ; 
Berulle  was  founding  another  brotherhood,  the  Oratorians, 
who  gradually  formed  a  college  for  the  training  and  sending 
forth  of  pious  priests  ;  St.  Francois  de  Sales  and  St.  Vincent 
de  Paul,  most  practical  of  saints,  were  pursuing  their 
heavenly  work. 

In  surroundings  such  as  these  lived  and  moved  the  Great 
Mademoiselle.  She  was  born  in  1627.  Her  mother,  a 
princess  of  Lorraine,  died  soon  after  her  birth  ;  her  father 
was  Gaston  of  Orleans,  son  of  Henry  iv.  and  brother  of 
Louis  xiii.,  a  fantastic  decadent,  who  feared  his  penetrat- 
ing daughter  and  by  turns  scolded  and  cajoled  her.  A 
lonely  little  girl  is,  perhaps,  the  most  pathetic  thing  on 
earth  ;  but  Mademoiselle  could  never  be  pathetic,  even  at 
three  years  old.  When  she  had  reached  that  age  she  had 
already  developed  a  full-fledged  hatred  for  Richelieu.  At 
nine  (when  she  was  baptized)  she  rebelled  against  his  sponsor- 
ship as  too  plebeian  to  suit  her.  At  ten  she  travelled  to 
Tours  that  her  father  might  '  present  his  mistress  to  her. 
Mademoiselle   declared   herself   satisfied   with  her  father's 


230  NEW  AND  OLD  « 

choice.'  She  had,  however,  refused  to  receive  her  till  her 
governess  could  assure  her  that  '  Louison  '  was  '  a  very 
good  girl.'  From  earliest  infancy  Mademoiselle  was  upheld 
by  her  overweening  sense  of  the  importance  of  the  '  younger 
branch  '  ;  by  her  dream  that  her  father  or  she  herself  might 
ascend  the  throne  of  France.  Her  exuberant  arrogance 
only  endeared  her  to  the  canaille.  She  did  not  reckon  them 
as  human  beings,  but  she  made  it  a  point  of  honour  to 
conduct  herself  as  their  goddess,  and  thought  of  herself  as 
such.  She  wrote  pages  about  her  own  beauty,  and  early 
in  the  day  she  set  about  the  real  task  of  her  life — the  find- 
ing of  a  husband  suitable  to  her  position.  Madame  Barine 
points  out  how  entirely  her  views  about  marriage  were 
based  upon  Corneille's  plays.  She  was  his  apt  pupil, 
besides  being  the  heroine  of  his  Pulcherie.  The  sacrifice 
of  individual  feeling  to  the  public  good  was  the  Corneillian 
ideal,  and  this  was  what  she  practised  with  heroic  bathos. 
Sentiment  she  regarded  as  a  sign  of  bad  breeding,  and  she 
resolved  to  love  nothing  but  the  highest  rank.  De  Soissons, 
her  first  lover,  the  only  one  in  her  youth  who  was  not 
purely  imaginary,  wooed  her  in  early  life  with  sweets,  but 
his  family  was  below  her  demands.  After  that,  nothing 
but  the  Emperor  would  please  her,  and  him  she  would  have 
married  had  she  hated  him.  Three  times  did  she  try  hard 
for  the  recalcitrant  potentate,  who  married  twice  and  lost 
both  wives.  Her  first  attempt  was  the  subject  of  a  quarrel 
between  her  and  the  Regent,  and,  as  she  refused  to  submit, 
her  father  shut  her  into  her  room  for  ten  days  ;  but  the 
mob  gathered  beneath  her  windows,  and  she  emerged  more 
powerful  than  ever.  Nothing  daunted,  she  soon  set  her 
mind  on  the  little  king,  and  only  swerved  from  him  at  the 
moment  when  the  imperial  situation  was  vacant ;  so  that 
at  the  same  moment  she  was  pursuing  a  mature  widower 
and  a  boy  of  ten  years  old.  Her  chances  of  winning  him 
depended  on  Mazarin's  stratagems,  and,  when  these  drove 


A  HEROIN!-:  OF  CORNEILLE  231 

her  to  despondency,  she  turned  her  attention  to  th<   gieal 
Conde. 

The  Fronde  gave  her  her  opportunity.  It  was  at  first 
the  war  of  the  people,  then  of  the  nobles  and  the  people, 
against  Mazarin  and  Anne  of  Austria.  Twice  the  Court 
fled  to  Saint-Germain  and  was  practically  cut  off  from 
supplies  ;  but  the  mob  excepted  their  idolised  Mademoiselle, 
who  went  in  and  out  of  Paris  as  she  pleased.  In  the  second 
Fronde,  the  city  of  Orleans,  threatened  by  the  Cardinal's 
troops,  summoned  its  Duke  Gaston  to  help  it ;  Gaston 
refused.  Mademoiselle  reproached,  implored — in  vain.  She 
resolved  to  go  in  his  stead,  and  arrived  in  his  apartment  in 
military  dress,  with  a  staff  of  feminine  field-marshals  in 
helmets.  Monsieur  allowed  her  to  go  and  gave  her  carte 
blanche ;  but  he  took  aside  the  masculine  officers,  who  were 
also  to  accompany  her  with  their  soldiers,  and  told  them  not 
to  let  her  do  anything  important  '  without  explicit  orders 
from  her  father.'  Mademoiselle  arrived  at  Orleans  ;  the 
Governor  unheroically  sent  out  bonbons  to  refresh  her,  but 
she  rose  to  the  occasion.  By  her  own  strategy  she  suc- 
ceeded in  entering  Orleans,  and  took  prompt  possession 
of  the  town.  She  remained  as  long  as  she  enjoyed  herself, 
and  then,  contrary  to  her  father's  commands,  she  rode  back 
to  Paris,  triumphantly  met  on  her  way  by  Conde  and  his 
army.  But  this  was  not  her  supreme  moment.  Turenne 
was  Mazarin's  general,  and  Conde  was  near  succumbing  to 
him  just  outside  the  closed  gates  of  Paris.  He  sent  in 
haste  to  Mademoiselle  to  bid  her  get  the  gates  opened. 
She  ran  to  her  father,  who  said  he  was  ill  and  refused  to 
act.  Again  she  upbraided  him  and  again  took  his  place. 
To  the  Hotel  de  Ville  she  marched,  forced  the  pusillanimous 
officials  there  to  have  the  gates  opened,  received  Conde, 
rushed  to  the  Bastille  and  commanded  that  its  cannon 
should  be  turned  on  the  enemy,  and,  returning  to  a  place 
near  the  gates,  was  in  time  to  learn  that  she  had  rescued 


232  NEW  AND  OLD 

her  Prince  from  death.  She  could  really  be  great  on  occa- 
sions, and,  with  all  the  impulsiveness  of  a  woman,  she  had 
the  coolness  and  resource  of  a  leader.  Life  was  more  to 
blame  than  herself  for  her  absurdities,  since  it  did  not 
provide  her  with  the  opportunities  suited  to  her  ever- 
present  forces,  and  these  became  grotesque  when  applied 
to  the  small  situations  of  daily  existence.  Dramatic 
natures  are  bound  to  create  a  drama  round  them,  and  that 
of  the  Grande  Mademoiselle  hovered  between  comedy  and 
tragedy.  Conde  knelt  to  her  on  that  victorious  evening, 
but  not  for  long.  Once  more  she  had  to  give  up  her  matri- 
monial hopes.  Worse  than  this,  there  was  talk  of  recalling 
the  banished  Mazarin.  The  Fronde  was  over,  the  Fron- 
distes  sent  into  exile.  Mademoiselle's  royal  blood  availed 
her  nothing.  She,  too,  was  forced  to  leave  Paris,  and 
drove  ignominiously  away  into  the  provinces  in  a  common 
hackney-coach.  For  the  first  time  she  was  depressed, 
and  it  is  at  this  tantalising  point  that  her  chronicler  chooses 
to  leave  her — in  a  mouldering  house,  her  property,  deep 
in  the  country.  But  Madame  Arvede  Barine  consoles  us  by 
the  promise  of  another  volume,  and  we  thank  her  for  it 
prospectively.  Her  sense  of  proportion,  her  vigour,  and  her 
gaiety  make  her  a  charming  biographer.  Her  translator 
hardly  does  her  justice.  To  render '  spirituel '  by  '  spiritual,' 
to  say  '  blessed  water '  for  '  holy  water,'  and  '  retired  him- 
self '  for  '  withdrew,'  are  surely  mistakes  that  can  be  avoided. 
As  we  close  the  book  we  feel  very  far  from  Mademoiselle 
d'Orleans  and  her  times.  And  yet,  on  consideration,  we 
also  feel  near  to  her.  Dress  changes,  but  woman  remains 
unaltered,  and  the  noble  Ridiculous  are  a  race  that  does 
not  die  out.  To-day  Mademoiselle  would  be  leading  some 
private  crusade  of  her  own,  half  laughable,  half  sublime  ; 
she  would  not  wear  a  helmet,  but  a  bonnet,  yet  the  'panache 
in  both  would  be  the  same.     (1903.) 


Oclibk   Siokel 


LOUIS  XIV  283 


LOUIS   XIV 

Memoires  sur  la  Cour  de  Louis  XIV.  Par  Primi  Visconti. 
Traduits  de  I'ltalien  par  Jean  Lemoine.  (Paris:  Calmann- 
Levy.     7f.  50c.) 

'  In  fact,  the  Court  is  the  best  comedy  in  the  world.'  Thus 
writes  the  Italian,  Primi  Visconti  (himself  an  actor  in  the 
piece),  about  the  Court  of  Louis  xiv.  Its  improper  pro- 
prieties astonished  him.     '  The  King,'  he  says, 

lived  among  his  favourites  ...  as  if  in  the  midst  of  his 
lawful  family  ;  the  Queen  received  their  visits  and  those  of  the 
natural  children  as  if  it  were  a  duty  she  was  bound  to  fulfil.  .  .  . 
When  they  came  to  Mass  at  Saint-Germain  they  placed  them- 
selves full  in  the  sight  of  the  King — Madame  de  Montespan 
and  her  children  on  the  left-hand  dais,  facing  the  public,  and 
the  other  one  (Mademoiselle  de  Fontanges)  on  the  right  hand  ; 
whereas  at  Versailles  Madame  de  Montespan  was  on  the  Gospel 
side,  and  Mademoiselle  de  Fontanges  upon  the  raised  steps  on 
the  Epistle  side.  With  their  rosaries  or  missals  in  their  hands 
they  prayed,  turning  up  their  eyes  in  ecstasy,  like  saints. 

The  frank  immorality  of  our  Charles  n.  is  almost  refresh- 
ing compared  to  this.  There  is,  indeed,  no  time  as  rotten 
as  that  in  which  vice  becomes  so  normal  that  it  demands 
its  pieties  and  a  rigorous  etiquette  of  its  own.  France  in 
1680,  writes  Visconti,  was  so  austerely  supervised  by  the 
King  that  its  outward  semblance  was  that  of  a  seminary. 
'  All  the  world,'  he  says,  *  is  afraid  of  the  King.  He  wants 
men  to  lead  a  regular  life.'  But  below  the  frigid  surface 
there  was  chaos  ;  '  every  household  in  a  state  of  revolt ; 
neither  dwelling-place,  property,  family,  nor  honours  which 
could  be  called  durable.  You  rise  in  the  morning  without 
knowing  what  will  have  become  of  you  by  the  evening  ; 
everything  is  in  the  hands  of  Providence.'  Perhaps  it 
is  not  the  least  significant  sign  of  the  day  that  the  last 


234  NEW  AND  OLD 

sentence  is  written  in  good  faith,  without  any  satirical 
intention.  Providence  at  Court  was  a  power  less  able  and 
more  arbitrary  than  the  King. 

There  were  a  great  many  reasons  for  this  dire  contrast 
between  seeming  and  reality,  and  one  of  the  chief  among 
them  was  that  between  the  King's  precepts  and  his  prac- 
tice. He  was  not  the  first  sovereign  to  combine  the  morals 
of  mythology  with  sentimental  religious  observance,  but  he 
was  perhaps  the  first  who  made  immorality  so  domestic  that 
parents  and  husbands  worked  hard  to  get  their  daughters 
and  wives  accepted  in  the  place  of  a  Montespan  or  a  Fon- 
tanges  ;  that  all  the  Court  rose  when  one  of  his  mistresses 
entered,  and  this  even  when  the  Queen  was  present — indeed, 
it  was  her  first  intimation  that  Madame  de  Ludres  was  the 
new  favourite.  Perhaps,  also,  he  was  the  first  ruler  to 
spend  his  own  life  in  making  love  and  to  condemn  others 
for  doing  so.  Lovers,  he  said,  were  '  the  slaves  of  passion,' 
useless  as  tools  for  State  business,  and  he  did  his  best  to 
circumvent  their  love  affairs  by  his  system  of  secret  intel- 
ligence. In  so  far  he  was  consistent  that  he  himself  was 
passionless,  while  avoiding  the  stigma  of  slavery  by  his 
method  of  domesticating  his  gallantries.  To  light  intrigues, 
so  long  as  no  man  took  them  seriously,  he  had  no  objection, 
thus  reducing  the  morals  of  his  day  to  the  last  dregs  of 
cynicism.  For  such  intrigues  became  so  much  the  fashion 
at  Court  that  men  would  do  anything  to  establish  their 
position  as  '  coureurs  ftaventures?  Visconti  describes  a 
gentleman  who  constantly  had  letters  brought  him  in  public 
places  by  messengers  dressed  in  grey.  '  I  surprised  him 
one  day,'  he  says,  '  in  the  act  of  reading  most  intently  a 
letter  in  the  courtyard  of  Saint-Germain — and  then  I  dis- 
covered that  the  letter  was  really  from  his  wife.'  The  King 
at  least  never  grew  silly  in  his  devices  to  escape  respecta- 
bility. But  his  qualities  were  by  no  means  negative. 
To  impose  himself  as  he  did   upon  his  subjects,  and   to 


LOUIS  XIV  285 

regulate  his  bad  life  as  stringently  as  if  it  were  a  good  one, 
required  no  common  capacities.  He  must  have  possessed 
that  baffling  gift  that  we  to-day  call  magnetism,  and  he 
must  have  had  a  strong  head  on  his  shoulders.  Paradoxical 
though  it  sounds,  he  must  also  have  exercised  great  powers 
of  self-control  when  he  wanted  to  exercise  them  ;  and  if  so, 
this  might  offer  some  kind  of  explanation  of  Visconti's 
surprising  assurance  that,  outside  his  State  ambition  and 
his  love  affairs,  his  Majesty  '  was  a  saint.'  No  stranger 
one,  surely,  ever  upset  the  calendar. 

Visconti's  studies  of  him  make  by  far  the  most  impres- 
sive part  of  the  book,  the  more  so  that,  written  for  a  private 
eye,  they  are  not  the  work  of  a  flatterer  with  self-interest 
to  serve.  It  may  be  that  we  have  all  been  rather  too  much 
under  the  spell  of  Thackeray's  immortal  picture  of  him, 
without  remembering  that,  masterpiece  though  it  be,  it  is 
a  masterpiece  painted  by  a  humorist ;  true,  indeed,  but 
only  partially  so — his  face  seen,  as  it  were,  in  profile,  from 
a  modern  point  of  view.  This  is  not  the  King  whom  men 
saw  then,  or  who  exercised  such  a  magic  sway  upon  them. 
We  have  too  long  regarded  him  as  the  amazing  Roi  Soleil 
who  shone  chiefly  upon  the  unjust,  and  we  have  hardly 
stopped  to  wonder  at  the  real  effectual  warmth  that  emanated 
from  him.  Primi  Visconti  makes  us  feel  his  charm  and  his 
force.  We  realise  the  dignity  of  his  presence  ;  his  shrewd 
and  cautious  cleverness,  more  solid  than  brilliant  in  his 
judgment  of  men  and  of  events.  After  he  and  his  Ministers 
had  sat  for  hours  over  some  knotty  problem  of  foreign  affairs, 
his  Majesty,  says  Primi,  would  retire  to  solitude,  and  next 
day  appear  in  council  with  a  lucid  solution.  Men  were  his 
books.  He  never  read,  unless  it  were  an  occasional  account 
of  his  campaigns,  or  some  work  dedicated  to  him,  of  which 
etiquette  demanded  a  perusal.  Literary  taste  he  had  none, 
nor  is  he  the  first  or  the  last  royal  personage  without  it. 
When   Racine  and   Boileau  were  allowed   to   compete   as 


236  NEW  AND  OLD 

writers  of  a  history  of  his  reign,  they  were  summoned  to 
read  aloud  what  they  had  written  to  himself  and  to  Madame 
de  Montespan.  '  Our  historians  had  better  go  back  to 
their  rhymes,'  said  the  Marechal  d'Estrades.  '  Ces  messieurs 
read  some  fragments  of  their  histories  yesterday,  at  Madame 
de  Montespan's,  The  King  shook  his  head,  and  every 
now  and  then  muttered,  "  Journalism,  pure  journalism," 
below  his  breath  to  Madame  de  Montespan.'  But  if  he 
had  no  artistic  gifts  (the  blunders  in  the  building  of  Ver- 
sailles were  his  own,  the  victories  belonged  to  those  he 
employed)  he  possessed  a  sense  of  humour  rather  rare  in  a 
king,  and  a  French  king.  Surrounding  sycophants  are 
part  of  the  conventional  portrait  of  him,  but  he  saw 
through  them  and  laughed  at  them  in  his  sleeve.  One  day 
at  dinner  he  took  a  rotten  pear,  ate  a  morsel,  and  passed  a 
slice  to  the  Marechal  de  Gramont,  who  was  famous  for 
servile  adulation.  '  What  a  delicious  pear  !  '  exclaimed 
Louis.  *  Pray  taste  it,  Monsieur  le  Marechal ! '  '  Exquisite, 
the  fruit  is  exquisite  !  '  said  Gramont  at  once.  The  King 
burst  out  laughing,  and  pronounced  the  pear  to  be 
'  detestable.' 

Practical  he  was,  rather  as  Napoleon  was  practical,  with 
a  leader's  scorn  for  middlemen  and  for  most  Ministers, 
except  as  useful  hacks.  No  petitioner  was  put  off  with 
an  official.  Each  one,  however  insignificant,  saw  him  face 
to  face.  Nor  did  he  waste  time  on  preliminaries.  He  never 
considered  any  public  subject  until  it  had  been  summed  up 
for  him  in  a  clear  and  concise  digest.  And  no  man  knew 
what  he  thought  until  he  had  taken  his  decision.  Abilities 
such  as  these  have  great  drawbacks.  Like  Napoleon,  he 
suppressed  able  men  and  encouraged  obedient  mediocrity. 
The  result  was  universal  degeneracy.  The  splendour  of 
royal  robes  and  fripperies  has  been  part  of  our  conception 
of  Louis — an  erroneous  part.  Here,  also,  his  attitude  was 
practical ;    he  valued  his  trappings  as  a  means  of  impres- 


LOUIS  XIV  237 

siveness — the  stock-in-trade  of  Divine  Right.  But  he  did 
not  care  for  them  in  themselves.  He  took,  says  Primi,  half 
the  time  his  chaplain  took  to  dress  himself  ;  and  in  war  he 
liked  work-a-day  clothes.  In  this  he  was  a  great  contrast 
to  his  brother,  '  Monsieur '  (d'Orleans),  who  '  dressed 
himself  for  battle  as  if  he  were  going  to  a  ball,  and  then, 
painted  and  indolent,  sauntered  up  to  the  most  dangerous 
places,  and  faced  the  fire  just  as  if  he  were  setting  out  to  call 
on  Mademoiselle  de  Grancey.'  And  this  man,  who  '  never 
wore  a  hat  in  the  field  for  fear  it  should  crush  his  wig,'  was 
a  far  better  soldier  than  the  hardy  King,  who  '  dressed 
himself  mainly  for  convenience  and  discarded  furbelows.' 

I  wish  you  could  see  the  King  [writes  Primi]  :  he  has  the  air 
of  a  great  dissembler  and  the  eyes  of  a  fox.  .  .  .  He  is  not 
handsome,  but  he  has  regular  features  and  the  eyes  express 
what  you  like.  They  are  majestic,  voluptuous,  tender,  great, 
in  turn.  In  short,  he  has  a  presence  .  .  .  and  if  he  were  no 
more  than  a  courtier,  he  would  stand  out  among  the  others  .  .  . 
I  have  been  with  him  and  other  courtiers  privily  in  his  apart- 
ment, and  more  than  once  I  have  noticed  that  if  the  door 
happened  to  open,  or  he  himself  went  forth,  he  at  once 
composed  his  attitude  and  changed  his  countenance.  .  .  .  He 
never  talks  State  affairs,  excepting  with  the  Ministers  in 
Council.  .  .  .  But  whenever  he  speaks,  even  when  he  speaks 
most  frivolously,  it  is  an  Oracle  who  pronounces.  At  table,  and 
wherever  he  is  obliged  to  talk,  he  does  so  gravely  and  clearly. 

France  is  the  land  of  common  sense,  and  Louis  was  the 
most  French  of  Frenchmen.  Common  sense  lifted  him 
above  the  superstitions  then  so  prevalent  at  his  Court. 
There  reigned  there  an  absolute  furore  for  prophecy,  fortune- 
telling,  every  kind  of  black  art  that  duped  credulity.  It 
was  entirely  to  this  credulity  that  Visconti  owed  his  footing 
at  Versailles.  For,  from  the  moment  he  arrived  in  France, 
he  began  to  prophesy  to  any  chance  stranger  with  the  most 
astonishing  results.     It  seems  as   if  he  must   have  been 


238  NEW  AND  OLD 

endowed  with  some  uncanny  power  of  second-sight,  inten- 
sified, as  he  himself  owned,  by  keen  faculties  of  observa- 
tion and  by  a  retentive  memory.  Some  said  that  on  his 
coming  into  France  two  gentlemen  of  quality  took  him  with 
them  and  initiated  him  into  every  detail  of  Court  scandals. 
That  might  explain  his  knowledge  of  the  writer,  directly 
any  letter  was  given  into  his  hand,  but  it  would  hardly 
account  for  his  strange  forecastings  of  that  writer's  future. 
Primi  became  '  the  rage '  ;  coaches  thronged  his  door, 
grand  ladies  blocked  his  staircase  ;  the  Queen  sent  for  him, 
and  even  the  Grande  Mademoiselle  deigned  to  make  a 
midnight  assignation  with  him  at  a  friend's  house,  and  to 
receive  him  there,  veiled,  anonymous — and  obviously  her- 
self. But  when,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  vogue,  the  King 
asked  him  if  his  knowledge  were  really  occult,  Primi  laughed, 
and  frankly  admitted  that  there  was  no  magic  in  it.  His 
answer  gained  him  the  royal  favour.  Louis  remained  his 
friend.  He  extended  his  patronage  to  the  histories  which 
Primi  took  to  writing,  and  when  trouble  drove  him  from 
his  own  land  of  Italy  the  King  finally  naturalised  him  as 
a  French  subject.  And  it  would  have  gone  ill  with  Primi 
in  the  famous  '  Affaire  des  poisons,'  had  not  Louis  protected 
him.  The  fashionable  craze  for  magic  had  ended  in  frequent 
deaths  by  poison,  and  a  drastic  inquisition  had  been  organised 
into  the  doings  of  all  those  who  practised  wizardry.  But 
the  '  Affaire  '  was  really  due  to  the  King's  one  obsession — 
his  horror  of  being  poisoned  himself — and  he  took  care 
that  Primi  should  not  suffer.  This  fear  of  death  paved  the 
way  for  Madame  de  Maintenon.  That  and  his  Majesty's 
growing  weariness  of  Madame  de  Montespan  were  at  least 
main  factors  in  his  so-called  repentance.  And  to  these 
must  be  added  the  growth  of  his  natural  taste  for  clever 
women  and  for  interesting  conversation.  It  is  a  pity  that 
Primi  should  stop  short  of  the  secret  marriage.  It  was  one 
that  even  he  would  not  have  dared  to  foretell.     (1908.) 


1)1  CHESS  SARAH  239 


DUCHESS   SARAH 

Duchess  Sarah  :  Heing  the  Social  History  of  the  Times  of 
Sarah  Jennings,  Duchess  of  Marlborough.  Compiled  and 
arranged  by  One  of  her  Descendants  (Mrs.  Arthur 
Colville).     (Longmans.      18s.  net.) 

Where  biography  is  concerned  the  dead  arc  more  satis- 
factory than  the  living.  When  we  come  to  the  lives  of  our 
contemporaries  we  are  either  too  much  stirred  or  too  much 
disappointed  ;  we  over-value  or  we  under-value  ;  we  are 
too  near,  too  much  influenced  by  the  stories  we  have  recently 
heard.  Such  chronicles  may  be  immensely  interesting,  but 
they  become  like  a  bit  of  life,  and  they  cannot  provide  us 
with  that  calm  and  refreshing  haven  which  we  reach  when 
we  drop  anchor  in  the  deeps  of  memoirs.  Nor  does  it, 
therefore,  matter  so  much  whether  these  are  well  or  ill 
written,  whereas  we  cannot  but  criticise  a  picture  of  our 
own  days  as  a  work  of  art  and  literature.  Any  anecdote 
of  the  past  that  throws  a  fresh  sidelight  amuses  and  instructs 
us,  without  our  making  much  demand  as  to  the  manner  of 
its  presentment. 

The  present  volume  is  a  case  in  point.  It  is  a  book  of 
delightful  intentions,  fulfilled  by  an  inexperienced  but  con- 
scientious hand.  The  facts,  the  stories,  the  letters,  follow 
each  other,  for  the  most  part,  according  to  their  date, 
without  much  coherence  or  power  of  choice,  and  with  no 
artistic  connexion.  But  the  author,  Mrs.  Arthur  Colville, 
has  the  blood  of  the  Duchess  in  her  veins,  and  she  says 
rightly  that  '  another  wTriter,  though  abler,  might  have  less 
sympathy  for  Sarah's  character  than  one  of  her  own 
descendants.'  As  Mrs.  Colville  writes  without  the  slightest 
pretension,  the  result  is  a  living,  if  confused,  portrait  of  the 
great  Duchess  of  Marlborough.  We  can  follow  her  from 
her  birth  in  1660,  through  her  youthful  days  at  Charles  n.'s 


240  NEW  AND  OLD 

Court — where  her  sister  Frances  Jennings  played  such  a 
part— and  on  through  the  reigns  of  James  n.  and  his  followers 
to  her  death  in  the  time  of  George  n.  Her  manners  were 
those  of  her  day.  '  I  could  not  make  out,  sir,  who  she  was,' 
said  a  lawyer's  clerk  to  his  master,  who  had  been  out  when 
she  came,  '  but  she  swore  so  dreadfully  that  I  am  sure  she 
must  be  a  lady  of  quality.'  And  yet,  whatever  her  manners, 
and  in  spite  of  the  corrupt  school  in  which  she  was  brought 
up,  her  morals  remained  free  from  taint — no  small  thing 
in  her  generation.  Her  talisman  was  her  heart,  as  she 
herself  unconsciously  tells  us.  '  I  have  always  thought,' 
she  wrote,  '  that  the  greatest  happiness  of  life  was  to  love 
and  value  somebody  extremely  that  returned  it,  and  to 
see  them  often.  .  .  .  But,  alas,  though  one's  natural 
pleasure  is  to  love  people,  the  generality  of  the  world  are 
something  or  other  so  disagreeable  that  it  is  impossible  to 
do  it.'  This  was  written  in  her  old  age,  but  it  flashes  her 
character  upon  us.  Vehemently  loving,  vehemently  vexed 
with  those  she  loved,  and  vehemently  frank  with  all  men, 
Sarah  Jennings  was  one  of  those  women  who  hated  nothing 
so  much  as  a  calm.  Storms  and  scenes,  whether  of  temper 
or  affection,  were  her  element,  and  though  she  often  imagined 
she  loved  solitude  in  Windsor  Forest,  it  was  but  as  a  rest 
from  her  tantrums.  She  recruited  her  forces  in  those  quiet 
glades  and  returned,  like  a  giant,  to  the  fray.  In  spite  of 
all  this,  however,  she  was  so  generous,  so  warm,  and  so 
nobly  devoted  that  her  intimates  (including  her  servants) 
could  not  help  adoring  her ;  and  first  among  them  came 
her  husband.  His  letters  to  her  were  ever  those  of  a  lover, 
and  his  patience  was  imperturbable,  though,  as  she  loved 
him  most,  she  plagued  him  almost  past  endurance.  '  On 
one  occasion  when  the  Duke  was  ill  Sarah  pressed  him  to 
take  some  medicine,  saying  impetuously,  "  I  '11  be  hanged 
if  it  do  not  prove  serviceable."  '  Dr.  Garth,  who  was  in 
the  room,  exclaimed,  *  Do  take  it,  my  lord  duke,  for  it  must 


DUCHESS  SARAH  241 

be  of  service  one  way  or  the  other!'     The  Duchess  only 

laughed,  for  she  enjoyed  receiving  frankness  as  much 
she  enjoyed  administering  it.  It  was  probably  this  very 
tempestuousness  of  hers  which  kept  her  heart  so  young 
and  lent  her  that  power  of  exciting  others  which  gave 
freshness  to  their  feelings  for  her.  When  she  was  a  widow 
and  the  Duke  of  Somerset  proposed  to  her  she  proudly 
refused  him.  If  he  were  the  Emperor  of  the  world,  she 
said,  she  would  '  not  permit  him  to  succeed  to  that  heart 
which  had  been  devoted  to  John  Duke  of  Marlborough.' 
As  for  the  Duke,  his  love  is  writ  clear  in  his  letters.  Whether 
they  were  sent  from  his  camp  in  the  Netherlands  when  he 
was  wearying  to  be  with  her  at  home,  or  written  in  England 
about  business  matters,  such  as  the  building  of  Blenheim, 
they  all  alike  breathe  the  true  spirit  of  romance.  So  did 
his  thoughts  and  actions.  It  must  have  been  one  of  the 
acutest  moments  of  Sarah's  life  when,  after  his  death,  she 
opened  the  cabinet  in  his  room  and  there  found  carefully 
preserved  the  long  golden  curl  that  she  had  cut  off  in  a 
pet  to  spite  him. 

Such  an  impetuous  woman  was  bound  to  make  uncommon 
friendships.  Mrs.  Colville  does  not  add  any  striking  fact 
to  what  we  already  know  about  Sarah's  famous  friendship 
with  Queen  Anne,  but  she  gives  that  completeness  to  the 
picture  which  makes  us  see  the  Duchess  in  rather  a  new 
light.  She  was  more  sinned  against  than  sinning,  and  the 
faults  that  spoiled  her  cause  were  the  faults  of  a  warm  heart 
and  an  outspoken  tongue.  Mrs.  Masham,  her  supplanter 
in  the  Queen's  favour,  was  her  cousin  and  her  debtor  in  a 
hundred  ways  ;  indeed,  she  owed  her  whole  career  to  Sarah's 
kind  offices  ;  and  the  mean  backstairs  stratagems  by  which 
she  ousted  her,  the  stories  she  told  the  Queen  against  her, 
the  machinations  she  indulged  in  with  Harley,  fully  justified 
the  Duchess's  anger.  The  affair  was  the  sadder  because 
of  the  trials  which   the  friendship  of  the  two  women  had, 


24£  NEW  AND  OLD 

in  old  days,  successfully  sustained.  These  were  the  days 
of  William  and  Mary,  when  Anne  was  in  disgrace  for 
keeping  Sarah  as  her  lady,  yet  none  the  less  braved  the 
consequences  and  clung  to  her ;  the  days  when  they  were 
still  '  Mrs.  Morley  '  and  '  Mrs.  Freeman,'  a  name  derived 
from  Sarah's  freedom  of  speech.  Nor  did  '  Mrs.  Morley  ' 
resent  this  frankness  ;  on  the  contrary,  she  begged  it  as  a 
favour  and  a  sign  of  equality  in  friendship.  But  this  loyalty 
to  Sarah  caused  the  breach  to  widen  between  her  and  her 
sister,  Queen  Mary.  Matters  grew  crucial,  and  when  the 
Princess  Anne  lay  seriously  ill  Mary  first  refused  to  take 
notice  of  the  fact,  and  then  paid  her  a  visit  which  can 
hardly  have  soothed  the  poor  invalid. 

The  Queen  never  asked  her  how  she  did,  nor  expressed  the 
least  concern  for  her  condition,  nor  so  much  as  took  her  by  the 
hand.  The  salutation  was  this : — '  I  have  made  the  first  step 
by  coming  to  you,  and  I  now  expect  you  should  make  the  next 
by  removing  my  Lady  Marlborough.'  The  Princess  answered 
'  that  she  had  never  in  all  her  life  disobeyed  her,  except  in 
that  one  particular,  which  she  hoped  would  some  time  or  other 
appear  as  unreasonable  to  her  Majesty  as  it  did  to  her.'  Upon 
which  the  Queen  rose  up  and  went  away. 

Anne  did  not  break  her  word,  and  it  was  only  after  she  came 
to  the  throne  and  put  herself  into  the  Tories'  power  that 
a  change  began  to  show  itself.  For  a  long  while  the  open- 
natured  Duchess,  who  really  loved  her  friend,  refused  to 
believe  the  truth.  But  facts  forced  themselves  upon  her 
eyes,  the  Queen  grew  ever  colder,  and  their  altered  relations 
soon  became  the  talk  of  the  town.  It  was  in  vain  that 
Sarah  sought  for  an  explanation.  Once  when  Mrs.  Masham 
refused  to  meet  her  and  clear  up  her  strange  conduct,  the 
Duchess  complained  of  this  to  Anne. 

It  was  the  Queen's  usual  way  on  any  occasion  where  she  was 
predetermined  (and  my  Lord  Marlborough  has  told  me  it  was  her 
lather's)  to  repeat  over  and  over  some  principal  words  she  had 


DUCHESS  SARAH  243 

resolved  to  use,  and  to  stick  firmly  to  them.  She  continued, 
therefore,  to  say  '  it  was  very  natural,  and  she  (Mrs.  Masham) 
was  very  much  in  the  right.' 

The  whole  picture  of  Anne— generous,  stupid,  and  royally 
obstinate — is  conjured  before  our  eyes.  Mrs.  Cohille 
thinks  that  Duchess  Sarah,  who  was  busy  about  many 
things — her  husband's  career,  her  children's  welfare—  had 
not  done  her  best  to  fulfil  Queen  Anne's  exacting  demands  ; 
but,  even  if  this  were  so,  she  could  hardly  have  checked  the 
rising  sun.  The  friendship  between  her  and  her  Sovereign 
was  never  re-established  ;  and  when  Queen  Anne  died,  worn 
out  by  Tory  dissensions,  both  Marlborough  and  his  wife 
were  abroad. 

Duchess  Sarah's  life  under  George  i.  and  George  n.  was 
never  so  deeply  involved  in  politics  as  it  had  been  in  the 
days  of  Anne.  She  busied  herself  largely  with  the  build- 
ing of  Blenheim  and  the  purchase  of  other  houses  ;  for  the 
laying-out  of  estates,  and  the  quarrels  this  implied,  were 
among  her  favourite  occupations.  She  found  time  for 
reading  also.  Her  ungovemed  temper  has  left  a  kind  of 
vague  impression  that  she  was  rather  an  uneducated  woman, 
but  this  was  far  from  the  case  ;  she  had  a  real  love  of  books 
and  a  neat  gift  for  quotation.  Cowley  and  Montaigne 
both  pleased  her.     She  says  : 

I  used  to  run  from  the  Court  and  shut  myself  up  six  weeks 
in  one  of  my  country  houses  quite  alone,  which  makes  me  now 
remember  Mr.  Cowley,  who  says,  '  'Tis  very  fantastical  and 
contradictory  in  human  nature  that  people  are  generally 
thought  to  love  themselves  better  than  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  yet  never  can  endure  to  be  with  themselves.' 

Montaigne's  essays  she  and  Anne  had  both  read  in  the  early 
days  of  their  intimacy.  And  there  was  a  certain  favourite 
passage  of  Anne's  in  the  Essay  on  Friendship,  with  which 
' Mrs.  Freeman '  upbraided  'Mrs.  Morley'  when  the  coolness 


244  NEW  AND  OLD 

began  between  them.     Sometimes,  too,  she  liked  philoso- 
phising.    She  writes  : 

As  for  my  dear  friend  Socrates,  I  believe  we  have  no  such 
men  in  this  country,  and  yet  I  am  not  perfectly  satisfied  even 
with  him ;  for  I  think  being  unconcerned  at  dying  was  more 
reasonable  at  a  great  age,  and  being  quite  weary  of  the  world, 
which  could  give  him  no  pleasure  no  more  than  it  can  me  .  .  . 
but  notwithstanding  this,  I  like  him  better  than  any  other  of 
the  philosophers.  As  for  his  showing  such  spirits  as  he  did  in 
the  conversation  after  he  had  taken  poison,  1  imagine  it  was  an 
easy  death  that  came  by  degrees,  and  he  could  talk  and  died 
much  easier  than  our  physicians  treat  us  when  they  blister  us 
and  put  frying-pans  upon  our  heads,  after  it  is  demonstrated  we 
cannot  live. 

She  liked  extemporising  about  the  soul,  now  in  play,  now 
in  earnest.  '  I  have  read  lately  that  there  was  an  opinion 
the  soul  never  died,  that  it  went  into  some  other  man  or 
beast  .  .  .  and  though  the  philosophers  prove  nothing  to 
my  understanding  certain,  yet  I  have  a  great  mind  to  believe 
that  Kings'  and  first  Ministers'  souls  when  they  die  go  into 
chimney-sweepers.'  This  was  written  to  Lord  Marchmont, 
the  friend  of  Pope,  with  whom  she  often  corresponded.  '  If 
you  talk  to  Mr.  Pope  of  me,'  she  says  in  another  place, 
'  endeavour  to  keep  him  my  friend,  for  I  do  firmly  believe 
in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  as  much  as  he  does,  though  I 
am  not  learned  enough  to  have  found  out  what  it  is.'  Pope's 
letters  to  her  are  delightful.  '  What  can  I  say  to  your 
Grace  ?  '  runs  one  of  them.  '  You  think  the  same  things, 
read  the  same  books,  like  the  same  people  that  I  do.  .  .  . 
Be  so  good  as  to  like  me  a  little  and  be  assured  I  shall  love 
you  extremely.  I  won't  subscribe  my  name  that  I  may 
not  be  thought  a  very  impudent  fellow.'  Pope  must  then 
have  basked  in  her  impetuous  wit,  which  did  not  grow  weaker 
with  her  years.  Far  from  that,  old  age  was  in  some  respects 
her  best  time.     Who  would  not  admire  the  gallant  spirit 


DUCHESS  SARAH  245 

which,  at  seventy-one,  took  her  to  the  Law-courts  to  bring 
'  an  amicable  suit '  against  her  wild  young  grandson.  Lord 
Sunderland,  and  prevent,  his  parting  with  Marlborough's 
sword  to  money-lenders — the  sword  she  had  given  the  boy 
herself?  'That  sword,'  she  exclaimed  to  the  Judg<-,  'my 
Lord  would  have  carried  to  the  gates  of  Paris.' 

Her  fierceness  about  politics  she  never  lost.  At  her 
evening  parties  she  '  occasionally  covered  her  head  with 
her  handkerchief,  and  was  then  supposed  to  be  asleep.  A 
few  years  later,  being  vexed  with  John  Spencer  (another 
grandson)  for  allowing  himself  to  be  influenced  by  Mr.  Fox, 
his  name  being  mentioned,  Sarah  exclaimed  when  in  this 
state,  "  Is  that  the  Fox  that  stole  my  goose  ?  "  '  This 
goose,  '  Jack  Spencer,'  was  her  favourite  grandson,  and 
Lady  Di  Spencer,  her  friend  and  her  secretary,  was  her 
favourite  granddaughter.  They  were  both  the  children  of 
her  beloved  child  Lady  Sunderland,  who  died  when  they 
were  small.  So  did  Lady  Bridgewater,  another  daughter 
dear  to  Sarah's  heart.  With  the  rest  of  her  family  she  was 
on  strained  terms ;  she  either  quarrelled  with  them  or  did 
not  like  them,  and  the  fault  was  not  wholly  on  her  side. 
Perhaps  had  her  only  son,  the  Marquis  of  Blandford,  lived, 
her  end  might  have  been  less  melancholy  ;  but  her  early 
married  life  was  overshadowed  by  his  death,  when  still  a 
lad  at  Cambridge.  Her  last  years  were  also  to  be  over- 
shadowed by  the  death  of  her  dear  '  Lady  Di,'  who  closed 
her  brief  career  at  twenty-eight.  The  Duchess  herself 
died  in  1744,  at  eighty-four  years  old,  surrounded  only  by 
devoted  servants,  for  '  Jack  Spencer  '  arrived  too  late  to 
bid  her  farewell.  There  were  few  she  would  have  cared  to 
have  with  her,  for  she  had  outlived  most  of  her  contem- 
poraries, and  when  the  end  came  it  came  as  a  release.  It 
is  difficult  to  judge  of  her  beauty,  largely  due  to  golden 
hair  and  brilliant  colouring,  from  the  frontispiece  of  this 
volume,  taken  from  Kneller's  painting  of  her.     It  is  of  the 


246  NEW  AND  OLD 

conventional  order,  as  are  the  other  pictures,  chiefly  of 
Royalties,  which  illustrate  Mrs.  Colville's  work.  But  the 
real  portraits — not  only  of  Sarah,  but  of  her  lord  the  Duke, 
of  Anne,  and  the  Georges  and  their  predecessors — are 
drawn  in  pen  and  ink  in  the  pages  of  this  pleasant  book. 
(1904.) 

ROUSSEAU 

Jean-Jacques  Rousseau.  By  Jules  Lemaitre.  Translated  by 
Jeanne  Mairet  (Madame  Charles  Bigot).  (Heinemann. 
12s.  6d.  net.) 

Rousseau  and  the  Women  He  Loved.  By  Francis  Gribble. 
(Eveleigh  Nash.      15s.  net.) 

The  Humane  Philosophy  of  Jean-Jacques  Rousseau.  Trans- 
lated by  Freoerika  Macdonald.     (Dent.    2s.  6d.  net.) 

Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  has  been  in  turns  adored  and 
detested  ;  he  has  never  been  neglected.  Nor  has  he  at 
any  time  ceased  to  count — and  this  although  many  of  his 
conceptions  are  now  obsolete,  much  of  his  intellectual  output 
useless.  What  is  it  that  makes  his  power?  M.  Jules 
Lemaitre,  whose  admirable  lectures  on  Rousseau  have  been 
translated  into  rather  faulty  English  by  a  Frenchwoman, 
assures  us  with  masterly  precision  and  with  his  own  delicious 
crispness  of  mind — perhaps  also  with  almost  too  much 
legal  skill — that  Jean-Jacques'  immortality  is  mainly  due 
to  his  style,  exposing  on  the  way  without  pity  all  the  twists 
and  the  foibles  of  his  philosophy.  This  might  be  true  if  it 
were  a  spoken  style,  the  great  oratory  which  appeals  to 
the  many.  But  written  style  touches  the  few,  a  limited 
number  of  people  who  have  literary  susceptibilities.  A 
larger  audience  demands  something  that  has  relation  to 
themselves  ;  something  that  touches  daily  life  and  conduct ; 
and  if  Rousseau's  influence  is  enduring,  it  is  somewhere  in 
this  moral  region  that  his  title-deeds  to  fame  will  be  found. 


ROUSSEAU  ^47 

Mr.  Gribble,  however,  docs  not  think  so.     He,  on  the  con- 
trary, seems  to  believe  that  Rousseau's  claim  lies  in  his 
madness  and  his  illness,  in  '  the  suspicious  insanity  of  ih< 
gouty,'  the  '  cardiac  trouble  '  which  made  him  quarrelsome, 

or  tin-  '  complaint  which  may  have  been  only  indigestion, 
but  was  more  probably  gastric  catarrh.'  But  then  Mr. 
Gribble  is  clinical  rather  than  literary,  and  it  is  certainly 
easier  to  explain  insanity  than  the  genius  which  causes  it. 
After  all,  Mrs.  Macdonald  has  done  more  to  make  us  under- 
stand that  genius  than  either  of  the  other  two.  She  has 
given  us,  although  in  translation,  a  well-chosen  collection 
of  maxims  from  his  works  ;  she  has  presented  us  with 
Rousseau  himself,  however  shorn  of  his  native  eloquence. 

We  are,  nevertheless,  no  nearer  the  secret  of  his  strength, 
and  the  only  fashion  in  which  we  can  attempt  to  reach  it 
is  to  begin  with  what  it  is  not.  It  is  hardly  his  political 
significance,  or  his  actual  contribution  to  thought.  Even 
if.  as  a  rough  generalisation,  it  be  true  that  he  made  the 
French  Revolution,  it  was  the  worst  part  of  it  that  he  made. 
But,  although  he  was  one  of  many  who  worked,  unknowing, 
at  the  loom  where  it  was  woven,  it  was  not  he  who  created  it. 
The  ideas  that  evoked  it  were,  as  M.  Lemaitre  points  out, 
in  the  air.  Rousseau  was  but  the  voice  of  his  age — a  voice 
crying  in  the  Hermitage,  not  far  from  Madame  d'Epinay, 
and  very  far  from  the  wilderness.  What  was  it,  then,  that 
gave  him  his  hold  on  the  world  ?  It  seems  as  if  it  were 
largely  this,  that  the  most  personal  and  self-absorbed  of 
men  has  in  some  ways  had  the  most  impersonal  effect.  He 
has  lived  on  in  the  realm  of  ideals,  perhaps  in  more  varied 
forms  (many  of  them  opposed  in  seeming  to  his  own),  and 
among  more  different  kinds  of  men,  than  almost  any  other 
modern  genius.  Some  of  his  unconscious  offspring,  although 
they  may  not  even  have  read  him,  have  been  his  worst 
foes,  have  slain  their  father  Parmenides  ;  but  no  educa- 
tionist, from  Miss  Edgeworth  to  Goethe,  hardly  an  idealist 


248  NEW  AND  OLD 

or  moral  reformer,  from  Ruskin  to  Tolstoi,  can  call  himself 
free  of  Rousseau.  Above  all — and  it  is  his  main  achieve- 
ment— he  formed  the  Romantic  school.  Victor  Hugo, 
George  Sand,  Michelet  also  (and  here  we  but  quote  M. 
Lemaitre),  would  rejoice  to  acknowledge  their  debt  to  him. 
England,  too,  showed  traces  of  him.  He  brought  men  back 
to  love  Nature  for  her  own  sake — to  love  her  lyrically.  He 
evoked  a  new  race  of  poets.  Wordsworth  himself  in  his 
years  of  fervour  for  the  Revolution  must  have  drunk  in  the 
ideas  of  Rousseau  and  found  that  the  Frenchman's  passion 
for  the  country  drew  out  a  deeper  chord  from  his  own  soul. 
Everywhere  Jean-Jacques  intensified  human  insight.  He 
invented,  says  M.  Lemaitre,  individualism  in  literature, 
that  note  of  intimacy  and,  often,  of  morbid  introspection, 
which  makes  the  greatness  and  the  smallness  of  modem 
art.  He  was  the  initiator  of  something  fresh — something 
of  a  strangely  alloyed  nature,  both  good  and  evil,  but 
something  which,  whether  good  or  evil,  is  ours  now  and 
indispensable. 

And  the  mixture  is  not  wholly  unexplained.  Rousseau's 
position  in  time  was,  perhaps,  unique.  He  is  generally 
regarded  as  the  prophet  of  a  vital  future,  but  he  had  in 
him  as  well  all  the  dead  roots  of  the  past.  No  one  was 
more  rotten,  or  more  fertile.  Decadent,  yet  vigorous  with 
the  sap  of  youth,  he  lived  in  a  frontier  country,  a  land, 
therefore,  of  vexed  issues  ;  and  none  can  tell  clearly  even 
now  what  was  decay,  what  was  promise,  in  him.  The  man 
who  could  blaze  out  in  noble  wrath  at  cruelty  and  preach 
the  gospel  of  loving-kindness  at  the  same  time  that  he  was 
leaving  his  five  babies,  one  by  one,  at  the  door  of  the  Found- 
lings' Hospital ;  who  could  thunder  against  rank  and  its 
luxuries,  yet  live  in  clover  at  the  expense  of  great  lords  ; 
who  urged  democracy  and  supported  aristocracy ;  who  wept 
over  the  charms  of  purity  and  proved  them  only  by  being 
an  exception  to  its  rule,  was  bound   to   bewilder  himself 


KOUSSEAU  249 

and  us.  He  is,  perhaps,  most  bewildering  in  his  fcmile. 
There  is  nothing  so  unnatural  as  a  return  to  Nature,  and 
Jean-Jacques  was  the  least  natural  of  men.  A  return  always 
implies  a  divorce,  and  a  divorce  for  some  highly-strung 
reason — sensitiveness,  satiety,  discontent,  aspiration,  no  Mr 
or  other ;  all,  more  or  less,  the  fruits  of  an  over-developed 
society.  Every  primitive  Utopian,  whether  purely  personal, 
like  Shelley  and  Blake  and  Thoreau,  or  a  dreamer  for  the 
world,  or  the  maker  of  an  eighteenth-century  Arcadia,  has 
founded  his  desire  for  solitude  on  some  such  disgust  with 
reality,  forgetting  the  while  that  Nature  is  the  greatest 
reality  of  all.  Rabelais,  alone,  who  turned  to  Nature  from 
no  quarrel  with  mankind,  but  because  he  wanted  to  fight 
asceticism — Rabelais  alone  saw  whither  natural  instinct 
must  lead  men.  He,  only,  had  the  courage  to  write  '  Fais 
ce  que  voudras  '  over  his  Abbey  of  Thelema.  Rousseau, 
afraid  of  facing  fact,  preferred  to  write  '  Sensibility '  over  his 
portal,  and  plunged  himself  up  to  the  head  in  a  quagmire 
of  untruth. 

It  was  this  determination  of  his  to  square  instinct  with 
conscience  which  so  misled  him.  '  Conscience  speaks  for 
Nature,'  he  writes,  ignoring  the  obvious  drawback  that, 
except  in  the  case  of  certain  instinctive  affections,  con- 
science and  Nature  are  at  fisticuffs.  Again,  '  the  passions 
natural  to  man  are  the  instruments  of  his  liberty  '  is  hardly 
a  statement  borne  out  by  history.  And  what  of  this  : 
'  There  exists  no  evil  but  that  which  thou  doest,  or  else 
sufferest,  and  both  these  evils  come  from  thee.  Universal 
evil  lies  only  in  disorder,  and  I  see  in  the  system  of  the  world 
an  order  which  never  belies  itself  '  ?  Man  left  to  himself, 
he  constantly  avers,  is  wholly  good  and  kind,  and  so  is 
Nature,  in  whose  image  he  is  made.  His  attitude  is  the 
reverse  of  that  of  Wordsworth.  While  Wordsworth  con- 
stantly tries  to  put  morality  into  Nature,  Rousseau  endea- 
vours to  prove  that  morality  is  natural.  Like  other  preachers, 


250  NEW  AND  OLD 

he  saw  only  what  he  wanted  to  see.  '  Oh  Nature  !  '  asks 
M.  Lemaitre,  '  what  then  art  thou  ?  We  should  so  like  to 
know.  But  if  thou  art  all  things,  as  seems  likely,  we  shall 
never  be  any  the  wiser.'  Rousseau,  however,  to  do  him 
justice,  has  left  us  a  professional  definition — and  a  very 
queer  one  it  is.  Nature,  he  tells  us,  is  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  first  only  applied  to  our  own  welfare  and  then 
extended  to  that  of  others.  It  is  a  definition  which,  paradox 
though  it  be,  covers  a  good  deal  of  ground.  It  provides,  if 
not  an  explanation,  a  way  of  stating  the  dual  nature  of 
human  beings — very  like  Blake's  theory  of  man's  conflict 
between  Nature,  the  carnal  and  selfish,  and  intellect,  the 
self-renouncing  and  redeeming  ;  or,  indeed,  slightly  twisted, 
not  far  from  Christian  Science  and  its  formula  of  mind,  and 
'  mortal  mind.' 

M.  Lemaitre,  however,  would  only  add  this  to  the  endless 
inconsistencies  which  Jean-Jacques  harboured  under  his 
ambiguous  terminology,  and  which  his  critic  proceeds  to 
show  up  remorselessly.  They  are  glaring,  sometimes  brazen, 
and  they  branch  out  in  every  direction  ;  his  politics,  his 
faith,  his  ethical  system,  his  daily  fife  are  full  of  them.  Jesuit 
and  Protestant ;  democrat  and  aristocrat ;  a  votary  of  the 
arts  and  their  denouncer;  the  defender  of  property  in  the 
Encyclopaedia  and,  at  the  same  moment,  its  virulent  foe 
in  public  speech;  a  strict  moralist,  a  lax  liver — the  legal 
evidence  against  him  is  irrefutable.  But  evidence,  after 
all,  is  not  the  same  as  truth  ;  it  is  law,  not  always  moral 
justice.  And  M.  Lemaitre  is  not  quite  fair  to  the  Rousseau 
at  the  bar.  Inconsistency  is  not  insincerity ;  it  is  a 
weakness  common  to  all  impressionable  men,  and  doubly 
prominent  in  Jean-Jacques,  who  was  born  abnormally  im- 
pressionable. His  exhortations  to  virtue  were  no  hypocrisy. 
He  wished  men  to  lead  a  good  life  ;  he  would  have  liked 
to  lead  one  himself,  but  he  did  not  want  the  strain  of  trying. 
No  one  knew  his  weakness  better  than  he  did.     '  Floating 


KOUSSEATT  25] 

between  Nature  and  reason,  T  live  in  a  perpetual  contra- 
diction and  do  nothing  that  I  wish  to  do,'  he  wrote  to  the 
great  doctor,  Tronchin.  And  again,  in  his  Reveries  d'ini 
Promeneur :    'This   comes  from  a   versatile   temperament 

which  a  turbulent  wind  always  agitates,  but  which  regains 
calm  the  instant  that  the  wind  ceases  to  blow.  It  is  my 
ardent  nature  which  perturbs  me,  and  my  indolent  nature 
which  pacifies  me.'  Such  a  character  could  never  pursue 
one  idea  steadily.  It  would  always  be  easy  to  prove  that 
he  had  no  convictions.  Besides,  in  spite  of  his  deeper 
qualities,  he  was  essentially  a  writer.  He  could  write  on 
any  subject,  take  any  side.  Pen  in  hand,  his  opinions 
came  to  him  as  he  wrote,  and  he  believed  that  he  had 
always  held  them.  When  he  was  discussing  with  Diderot 
the  essay  that  made  his  fame,  about  the  influence  of  the 
arts  upon  the  world's  progress,  he  announced  himself  as 
their  champion.  But  when  Diderot  urged  him  to  take 
the  opposite  view,  as  more  interesting,  he  consented,  and 
wrote  a  burning  indictment  of  art  and  science  as  the  cor- 
rupters of  humanity.  M.  Lemaitre  would  have  us  think 
that  his  whole  career  was  thus  based  upon  an  insincerity  ; 
but,  sooner  or  later,  Rousseau  was  bound  to  turn  into  a 
foe  of  civilisation,  and  his  false  arguments  probably  first 
set  him  imagining  the  evils  it  had  brought  upon  men, 
and  helped  him  to  formulate  his  message.  The  essay  was 
a  pure  piece  of  journalism,  and  of  journalism  Rousseau  was 
the  genius.  It  was  this  brilliant  faculty  which  enabled 
him  to  furnish  eloquent  tags,  such  as  became  the  trumpet- 
calls  of  the  Terror — such  as  made  Robespierre  and  Saint- 
Just  and  Madame  Roland  quote  him,  and  Marat  read  him 
aloud  to  an  acclaiming  audience. 

But  there  is  one  consistency  which  even  M.   Lemaitre 
would  allow  to  Rousseau — his  amazing,  his  colossal  egoism.1 

1  [The  reader  of  these  papers  may  be  warned  that  the  writer  seems  to  have 
used  this  word  to  cover  the  meanings  both  of  'egoism5  and  of  'egotism.'] 


252  NEW  AND  OLD 

If  egoism  is  only  vast  enough,  it  can  work  wonders  as 
great,  though  not  as  moral,  as  does  self-sacrifice.  And 
through  egoism  it  was  that  Rousseau  produced  much  of 
his  effect.  In  him  it  turned  to  unlimited  sentimentalism, 
the  most  heartless  of  all  '  isms.'  It  is  easy  enough  to  be 
the  Friend  of  Humanity,  which  one  does  not  see,  but  harder 
to  live  at  peace  with  one  individual ;  and  this  inhumanly 
quarrelsome  professor  of  human  feelings  had  no  love  in 
him — did  not  know  what,  let  alone  devotion,  the  commonest 
forbearance  meant.  He  belonged,  like  his  literary  descen- 
dant, George  Sand,  to  the  perilous  and  self-righteous  race 
of  aspirers  ;  persons  so  wrapped  up  in  the  nobility  of  their 
aims  that  they  forget  about  their  deeds,  and  think  that 
they  cannot  do  wrong.  '  I  am  intimately  persuaded  that 
of  all  the  men  whom  I  have  known  in  my  life  none  was 
ever  better  than  I,'  he  wrote.  And  again,  in  the  Reveries 
aVun  Promeneur,  '  My  vanity  was  set  at  ease  when  I  grew 
kind  to  myself,  and  thus,  turning  into  self-love,  it  once 
more  became  part  of  the  order  of  Nature.  .  .  .  The  love 
of  oneself  is  always  good  and  in  harmony  with  order.  We 
must,  indeed,  love  ourselves  better  than  anything  else.' 
And  his  measureless  vanity  told  ;  the  world  took  him  at 
his  own  valuation.  For  fifteen  mortal  hours,  with  a  short, 
begrudged  interval  of  rest,  did  an  audience  of  adoring  men 
and  women  listen  to  his  reading  aloud  of  the  Confessions. 
They  wept  over  him ;  he  wept  over  himself — often  ;  upon 
his  waistcoat  (as  he  tells  us),  anywhere  so  long  as  he  shed 
tears.  And  if  Mrs.  Cockburn,  of  Edinburgh,  is  typical  of 
his  ordinary  hostess,  who  can  wonder  that  he  expected  a 
good  deal  ?  '  Lord  bless  you,'  she  writes,  '  bring  Rousseau 
here.  .  .  .  Sweet  old  man,  he  shall  sit  beneath  an  oak, 
and  hear  the  Druids'  songs.  ...  I  will  have  him !  I 
cannot  speak  to  him,  but  I  know  his  heart.'  As  for  parents, 
they  flocked  to  ask  his  counsel  about  the  training  of  their 
children,  and  he  died  at  the  house  of  a  Marquis  who  sent 


KOUSSEAU  253 

his  unhappy  progeny  every  morning  up  ;i  masl  to  fetch  their 
breakfast,  a  hardening  discipline  to  which  even  the  dreadful 
little  Emile  was  not  subjected.  Rousseau  figured,  indeed, 
as  a  high  priest  of  education,  and  led  the  double  life  of  a 
priest,  the  life  of  the  pulpit  and  his  private  life. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  priest  in  him  that  increased  his  power 
with  women.  He  possessed  all  the  qualities  that  fascinate 
them.  He  was  expressive,  he  needed  a  confidante,  he 
suffered,  they  saved  him  from  the  stake.  He  had  lofty 
views  and  no  sense  of  honour.  In  vain  we  seek  a  word  to 
define  him.  The  dictionary,  unfortunately,  provides  us 
with  no  such  name  ;  and,  against  our  will,  we  find  ourselves 
constrained  to  take  refuge  in  the  objectionable  term  '  cad.' 
A  cad  he  was — a  cad  of  genius,  of  the  same  dazzling  family 
as  Byron  and  Chateaubriand,  who,  like  him,  were  always 
adored  by  women.  It  is  regrettable  that  it  is  this  side  of 
him  which  Mr.  Gribble  chooses  chiefly  to  handle  ;  but  his 
slightly  servants'-hall  standards  of  love  do  not  suit  the 
psychology  of  great  ladies,  and  he  does  not  understand  the 
Duchesse  de  Luxembourg,  or  even  the  less  refined  Madame 
d'Epinay.  His  best  portrait  is  that  of  Therese  ;  but  here, 
too,  taste  is  not  his  strong  point.  We  have  heard  of  open 
sin,  but  Mr.  Gribble  prefers  a  more  homely  idiom.  He  calls 
it  '  quiet  concubinage.'  Wordsworth  could  never  have 
imagined  so  improper  a  theme,  but  had  he  done  so,  '  John 
James  and  Theresa,  or  Quiet  Concubinage,'  would  have 
been  no  unlikely  title  for  one  of  his  Poems  of  the  Domestic 
Affections.  And  what  light  in  the  end  does  Mr.  Gribble 
throw  upon  anything  significant  in  Rousseau  ?  He  proves, 
indeed,  that  Madame  de  Warens  was  not  separated  from  her 
husband  on  account  of  a  love  affair,  but  because  she  was  a 
swindler,  and  ran  away  with  all  his  plate ;  on  hearing  which, 
says  M.  de  Warens,  '  I  swallowed  a  basin  of  soup,'  a 
bracing  and  sensible  course,  but  not  one  which  affected 
Jean-Jacques.     And  then  Mr.  Gribble  demonstrates  that, 


254  NEW  AND  OLD 

owing  to  an  error  in  dates,  Jean-Jacques'  joint  occupation 
of  Les  Charmettes  with  Madame  de  Warens,  supposed  to  be 
such  an  idyll,  only  took  place  after  the  appearance  of  the 
rival  lover,  not  before,  so  that  all  romance  is  now  destroyed. 
But  this  fact  has  no  importance,  except  in  the  region  of 
gossip,  and  had  little  effect  upon  the  mind  or  life  of  Rousseau. 
Mr.  Gribble  is  so  clever  in  his  statements,  and  has  such 
shrewd  flashes  of  perception,  that  it  is  a  pity  he  cannot 
oftener  be  more  weighty  about  his  subject. 

For  it  is  to  Rousseau  that  we  come  back.  In  his  own 
time  he  could  but  produce  chaos,  such  a  classic  of  confusion 
as  La  nouvellc  Ilclo'ise,  that  novel  '  serious  and  false,'  as 
M.  Lemaitre  calls  it ;  such  topsy-turvy  reforms  as  induced 
grand  ladies  to  have  their  babies  brought  to  the  opera  that 
they  might  nurse  them  in  their  boxes.  But  what  is  his  final 
worth  ?  It  is  emotional,  not  intellectual — a  contribution  to 
art,  not  to  thought.  He  initiated  something  greater  than 
the  Romantic  Movement.  He  introduced  into  art  the  idea 
that  motive  is  more  than  deed.  The  Quietists  had  already 
translated  it  into  practice  and  had  done  a  good  deal  of  harm 
by  it.  In  the  hands  of  Rousseau,  the  artist,  it  was  equally 
dangerous.  '  I  was  a  slave  in  my  vices,'  he  said,  '  in  my 
remorse  I  am  free.'  But  though  the  conception  brings  its 
perils,  it  is  also  one  of  the  grandest,  and  it  has  done  big 
things  in  literature  ;  nor  could  we  of  to-day  do  without  it. 
And,  pace  M.  Lemaitre,  there  is  something  to  be  added. 
Beneath  self-deceptions  and  discrepancies,  Rousseau  has 
a  final  consistency.  He  has  only  mistaken  the  name  of 
the  end  that  he  made  for.  It  was  not  Nature  he  sought, 
but  moral  simplification,  the  object  of  all  social  reformers, 
ancient  and  modern,  from  the  days  of  primitive  Christianity 
to  those  of  Socialism,  of  Ruskin,  Morris,  Tolstoi.  In  all  his 
writings  this  one  aim,  this  one  taste,  stands  out  visibly 
interwoven  with  contradictions  and  tangled  webs  of  words. 
It  lends  force  and  cohesion  to  what  would  otherwise  be 


THE  UNSELFISH   EGOIST  255 

inchoate  emotion.  Rousseau's  falsity  could  not  destroy 
his  own  truth.  '  The  holy  truth  which  his  heart  adores,' 
he  says  of  the  Vicaire  Savoyard,  '  dots  not  consist  of  in- 
different facts  and  futile  names,  but  in  giving  unto  each 
man  faithfully  that  which  is  his  due  of  the  things  which 
are  veritably  his.'  This  is  the  real  Rousseau.  An  old 
farmer  who  saw  him  in  Derbyshire,  and  tried  in  later  years 
to  describe  him,  was  not  far  wrong  in  his  summary.  '  It 
was  thought,'  he  said,  '  he  was  some  King  who  had  bi  <  n 
driven  from  his  dominions.'  And  so  he  was — driven,  per- 
chance, by  madness.  But  death  came  to  redeem  him,  and 
his  dominions  are  regained.     (1908.) 


THE   UNSELFISH   EGOIST 

The  Intimate  Letters  of  Hester  Piozzi  and  Penelope 
Pennington,  1788-1822.  Edited  by  Oswald  G.  Knapi-. 
(Lane.      l6s.  net.) 

It  is  sometimes  difficult  to  remember  that  Mrs.  Piozzi 
was  once  Mrs.  Thrale  ;  that  the  object  of  Johnson's  devotion 
is  the  same  woman  as  the  idol  of  Piozzi.  The  person  adored 
partakes,  indeed,  of  the  nature  of  the  adorer.  Samuel 
Johnson  was  first-rate  and  Gabriel  Piozzi  was  not.  Besides, 
Johnson's  love  was  no  sinecure  :  and  when  from  the  strenu- 
ous industry  of  serving  him  body  and  mind — a  mind  held 
forcibly  to  his  level — Hester  Thrale  passed  into  the  slippered 
ease  of  reigning  as  Queen  over  inferiors,  the  relaxation  was 
too  great  for  her  calibre.  It  is  generally  only  the  finest 
natures  that  are  at  their  best  when  they  are  comfortable, 
and  Mrs.  Thrale  sober  is  better  than  Mrs.  Thrale  drunk — 
as  she  was  under  the  spell  of  her  infatuation  for  the  Italian 
singer,  the  4  Papist,'  the  '  foreigner,'  whom  she  married  in 
the    teeth   of   a   hostility    which   was    almost   persecution. 


256  NEW  AND  OLD 

Mrs.  Piozzi  it  is,  not  Mrs.  Thrale,  who  is  set  before  us  in 
this  newly  published  correspondence  with  Penelope  Penning- 
ton (born  Penelope  Weston),  ably  furnished  by  Mr.  Knapp 
with  introduction,  notes,  and  portraits  of  distinction.  The 
correspondence  began  in  1788,  not  long  after  the  ladies 
made  acquaintance  and  about  four  years  later  than  the 
marriage  with  Piozzi ;  except  for  one  long  break,  it  con- 
tinued with  increasing  intimacy  until  Mrs.  Piozzi's  death 
in  1821. 


It  is  not,  therefore,  the  Mrs.  Thrale  of  Boswell,  or  of  John- 
son's letters,  or  of  her  own  sparkling  letters  to  him,  or  Mrs. 
Thrale  as  she  saw  herself  in  her  Autobiography,  that  we 
are  now  regarding,  but  a  later  edition ;  a  celebrity  no  longer 
making  her  intellectual  livelihood,  but  living  upon  a  bequest ; 
a  confident  success ;  the  lady  of  Mr.  Mangin's  Piozziana ;  the 
heroine  of  Bath  and  its  literati.  Bath  was  the  deceptive 
stage  of  all  big  things  in  miniature,  where  the  audience  most 
easily  confounded  measurements  and  held  little  concerns 
— themselves  included — for  big  ones,  and  minnows  for 
Tritons  ;  the  seat  of  learned  frivolity  and  frivolous  learning, 
where  it  was  easy  for  people  to  take  themselves  seriously 
and  to  take  that  for  seriousness.  And  with  Bath,  though 
she  did  not  live  there  altogether  until  after  Piozzi's  death, 
his  wife's  fortunes  were  bound  up.  Her  prestige  there  was 
of  no  common  sort,  for,  unlike  that  of  so  many  of  its  stars, 
it  was  not  a  local  glory.  She  was  a  fixed  planet  in  the 
heaven  of  literature — acclaimed  for  her  '  elegant  genius,' 
her  wit  and  learning,  by  the  choice  spirits  of  her  day.  '  Her 
conversation,'  says  Miss  Seward,  '  is  indeed  that  bright 
wine  of  the  intellect  which  has  no  lees.'  And  nine  hours 
of  that  wine  did  '  the  Swan  '  enjoy  in  one  day  when  the 
Piozzis  visited  Lichfield.  The  Pope  of  literary  ladies, 
Hannah  More,  with  her  talent  for  success  in  this  world  and 


THE  UNSELFISH  EGOIST  257 

the  next,  was  Mrs.  Piozzi's  admirer;    so  was  Mrs.  Carter, 
that  solid   store-cupboard    full   of   scholarship  and   piety. 

Mrs.  Siddons  gave  her  something  like  worship;  Mrs.  Montagu, 
Miss  Burney,  Mrs.  Garriek,  the  second  marriage  once  an 
established  fact,  hastened  to  acclaim  her.  In  the  cas<  i  f 
men,  the  motives  of  adulation  were  more  complicated  ; 
but  every  accessible  author  brought  her  incense — and  his 
manuscripts.  '  We  want,'  she  wrote,  '  no  flash,  no  flattery. 
I  never  had  more  of  either  in  my  life,  nor  ever  lived  half  so 
happily.'  And  there  was  solid  foundation  for  her  popularity. 
She  answered  the  often  tiring  demands  of  friends  and  scrib- 
blers ;  she  was  as  fond  of  women  as  of  men ;  she  was  loyal 
and  generous  to  them  ;  she  was  kind,  she  was  disinterested. 
Added  to  these  moral  qualities,  she  had  an  independent 
mind,  a  real  impersonal  love  and  a  remarkable  knowledge 
of  literature,  as  her  frequent  apt  quotations  from  Shake- 
speare would  suffice  to  attest.  Her  wit,  acutest  in  her  letters 
to  Johnson,  remained  alive  in  the  notes  to  her  autobio- 
graphy, and  in  many  of  her  pages  to  Mrs.  Pennington, 
though  that  copious  correspondent,  a  clever  goose  who 
pulled  her  fluent  quills  from  her  own  breast,  never  drew 
out  the  best  from  Mrs.  Piozzi.  And  her  life  showed  no 
eye-opening  discrepancy  between  precept  and  practice. 
Hester  Salusbury  began  her  career  as  a  spoilt  child  in  the 
house  of  her  uncle,  Sir  Robert  Cotton,  and  developed  into 
a  youthful  prodigy,  trained  in  Latin  and  logic  by  her  captive 
tutor,  Dr.  Collier.  Her  mother  persuaded  her  to  accept 
the  wealthy  brewer  Mr.  Thrale,  whom  she  did  not  love  and 
who  did  not  love  her  ;  he  married  her,  she  said,  because  she 
was  the  only  woman  of  his  choice  who  consented  to  live  at 
Southwark.  He  gave  her  literary  society  and  Dr.  Johnson, 
but  he  gave  her  nothing  of  himself.  He  allowed  her  no 
power,  not  even  that  of  ordering  dinner ;  he  never  spoke 
to  her  of  his  affairs,  or  drew  closer  to  her  through  the  care 
of  their  twelve  children,  eight  of  whom,  including  both  their 

E 


258  NEW  AND  OLD 

sons,  died  early.  Yet  when  ruin  threatened  him  she  raised 
the  needful  money  to  save  the  business  ;  she  was  an  excellent 
mother,  an  excellent  wife.  To  Johnson  she  sacrificed  her 
time,  her  health,  her  habits.  When  the  world  libelled  her 
for  her  marriage  with  Piozzi,  and  her  disagreeable  daughters 
made  false  accusations  and  turned  their  backs  upon  her, 
she  bore  them  no  ill-will,  and  was  reconciled  directly  they 
desired  it.  And  when  '  Miss  Thrale,'  as  she  always  called 
the  eldest — the  '  Queenie  '  of  Johnson's  affection — tried  to 
go  to  law  to  rob  her  of  her  inheritance,  her  only  vengeance 
was  to  present  her  with  large  sums  of  money.  To  Piozzi 
she  was  a  perfect  companion,  to  his  gout  a  faithful  nurse, 
and  to  the  tenants  on  her  Welsh  estate  the  kindest  of 
patronesses.  After  his  death  she  lavished  a  fortune  on  his 
ungrateful  nephew,  was  constant  in  beneficence  and  courage- 
ous in  difficulties.  She  died  with  dignity,  surrounded  at 
the  last  by  her  money-seeking  children.  And  her  energy 
was  amazing  : 

Farewell,  dear  Friend  [she  wrote  from  Wales  when  nearly 
sixty]  .  .  •  'tis  five  in  the  morning,  I  was  up  at  four,  shall  call 
the  men  and  maids  at  six,  send  away  this  scrawl  at  seven,  jump 
into  the  bath  at  eight,  breakfast  at  nine,  work  at  the  book  till 
one,  walk  till  three,  have  dined  by  four,  fret  over  Gillon's  dis- 
patches and  Piozzi's  misery  all  the  rest  of  the  day ;  a  pretty 
biographical  sketch  of  your  literally  poor  H.  L.  P. 

Could  there  be  a  greater  contrast  to  the  letter  Mrs.  Carlyle 
would  have  written  in  like  domestic  circumstances  ?  And 
yet  Jane  Welsh's  grumbles  leave  us  inside — her  sprightly 
predecessor's  letters  outside — herself.  Why  does  Mrs. 
Piozzi's  presence  fail  to  inspire  us  with  the  sympathy  that 
her  qualities  seem  to  warrant  ? 

n 

Does  the  answer  he  in  the  difference  of  century  ?  The 
readers  of  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr.  Bennett  must  feel  leagues 


THE  UNSELFISH  EGOIST  259 

away  from  the  fashionable  volume  of  1786  so  much  vaunted 
by  Mrs.  Pioz/i  to  Mrs.  Pennington,  Dr.  Moore's  Zeluco,  the 
aim  of  which  was  '  to  trace  the  windings  of  \  ice,  and  delineate 
the  disgusting  features  of  villany.'  A  day  when  tea — to 
quote  Mrs.  Pennington — was  called  '  a  fragrant  libation,' 
when  '  professed  infidels  '  figured  as  the  solid  bogy  of  respect- 
ability, when  Miss  Seward's  suitor  was  mentioned  as  '  the 
gentle  Wickens,'  and  Mrs.  Piozzi  dwelt  on  '  the  elegant 
Eclipse  of  the  Moon,'  and  seldom  spoke  of  the  sea  but  as 
'  Old  Neptune,'  is  not  our  day, — though  perhaps  gentility 
and  crudity,  the  love  of  dressing  up  and  the  cult  of  no 
clothes,  are  nearer  of  kin  than  it  might  seem.  Nor  is  the 
hyperbole  of  the  past  much  more  exaggerative  than  the 
bareness  of  the  present.  '  Glorious  creature !  How  she 
writes  !  '  Mrs.  Piozzi  exclaims  about  Hannah  More  ;  and 
'  Hannah  More,  Europe,'  she  says  elsewhere,  is  sufficient 
address. 

It  appears  [she  also  writes  to  Mrs.  Pennington]  so  strange 
and  so  shocking  to  put  up  my  letter  without  speaking  of  Miss 
Seward  that  I  can't  bear  it.  .  .  .  Her  Mental  and  indeed  her 
Personal  Charms,  when  I  last  saw  them,  united  the  three  grand 
Characteristics  of  Female  Excellence  to  a  very  great  Perfection  : 
I  mean  Majesty,  Vivacity,  and  Sweetness. 

But  mutual  admiration  societies  are  not  confined  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  There  is,  said  Dr.  Johnson,  '  a  little 
silkworm  world  round  every  individual  '  ;  and  that  silk- 
worm world,  if  rather  relaxing,  provided  these  ladies  with 
the  kind  of  excitement  that  gave  life  a  motive-power  and 
kept  them  sweet.  Their  very  follies  served  them.  The 
octogenarian  Mrs.  Piozzi  fell  maternally  in  love  with  a 
young  and  third-rate  actor,  whom  she  took  for  a  genius 
and  who  made  her  the  confidante  of  his  love-affairs.  The 
imitative  Mrs.  Pennington  followed  suit,  and  at  seventy 
gave  him  a  kiss  '  as  chaste  as  Dian  ever  gave,'  which  she 


260  NEW  AND  OLD 

duly  reports  to  her  senior  rival.  The  young  man  sensibly 
escaped  them,  but  he  no  more  quarrelled  with  them  than 
we  do.  Their  sentiment  was  an  innocent  extravagance  put 
on,  as  it  were,  from  the  outside,  and  innocuous  to  anything 
deeper  than  their  dignity.  Yet  two  or  three  of  Mrs.  Piozzi's 
letters  concerning  him  bring  us  close  to  the  real  cause  of 
our  coldness  towards  her.  A  phrase  here  and  there  reveals 
that  there  was  about  her  the  Puss  Victrix,  who  frisked  after 
reels  of  cotton  long  after  the  age  of  reels  was  past,  and 
even  in  the  midst  of  those  benevolent  activities  which  gave 
her  more  suitable  occupation. 

The  fact  is  that  Mrs.  Piozzi  was  that  baffling  being,  an 
unselfish  egoist,  always  doing  for  others,  always  thinking 
of  herself.  And  with  emotion.  She  was  in  love  with  her- 
self, and,  like  other  lovers,  saw  the  beloved  as  she  desired 
her  to  be.  Human  beings  she  viewed  exclusively  in  their 
relation  to  her ;  she  needed  adoration,  she  was  subject  to 
her  adorers,  whether  to  Dr.  Johnson  or  to  Piozzi ;  but,  given 
the  incense,  she  did  not  know  the  difference  between  them, 
and  when  they  did  not  offer  it,  she  had  no  further  use  for 
them — a  fact  which  may  account  for  her  cold  though  generous 
attitude  towards  her  children  after  they  outgrew  her  sway 
and  became,  we  cannot  but  surmise,  irritated  at  her  success 
out  of  due  season.  This  it  was,  also,  which  no  doubt  made 
her  unconsciously  prefer  a  wide  social  career,  touching  many 
people  at  surface  points,  to  a  more  searching  intimacy. 
'  She  always  seemed  to  me  kind  and  warm-hearted,  but 
with  no  deep  sensibilities,'  wrote  Helen  Williams,  the  Diarist 
of  the  French  Revolution. 

Her  delight  in  herself  was  certainly  apt  to  make  her  rather 
dense  about  humbler  people — her  dependants,  or  those 
whom  she  conveniently  dismissed  as  '  Rustics,'  whose 
admiration  did  not  interest  her.  When  she  and  Piozzi 
restored  the  church  on  her  Welsh  estate  and  opened 
'  our  tiny  temple,'  she  wrote  a  rather  tactless  hymn  for 


THE  UNSELFISH  EGOIST  261 

the    occasion,    which    '  dear    Piozzi     set    enchantingly    to 

music  '  : 

To  unambitious  efforts  kind, 

Pleased  lie  permits  our  rustic  lays; 

Our  simple  voices,  unrefined, 

Have  leave  to  sing  their  Sariour's  praise. 

So  it  runs  ;  and  the  predestination  of  their  voices  must  have 
been  rather  depressing  to  the  choir. 


in 

In  one  of  her  letters  Mrs.  Pennington  ventures  so  far  as 
to  compare  herself — with  strict  reservations — to  Ninon 
de  l'Enclos  ;  but  neither  she  nor  Mrs.  Piozzi  could  have  been 
anything  but  English,  far  removed  from  their  sisters  of 
France.  It  is  just  because  they  were  so  disinterested  in 
conversation  that  Frenchwomen  achieved  their  social 
supremacy.  When  Madame  de  Sevigne  talked  of  herself,  as 
she  did  freely,  it  was  because  she  had  something  she  enjoyed 
telling,  and  she  spoke  externally,  as  she  would  of  another 
person.  And  if  we  come  to  Mrs.  Piozzi's  contemporaries, 
Madame  du  Deffand  was  athirst  for  love  rather  than  for 
admiration  ;  her  vanity  took  the  form  of  self-disgust,  a  form 
which  only  sharpened  her  self-criticism  ;  while  the  vanity 
which  inspired  women  like  Madame  d'Epinay  turned  into  the 
fashionable  sensibilite,  a  quality  absurd  enough,  but  not  one 
which  ate  deep  into  the  soul  like  self-satisfaction.  As  for 
Madame  de  Stael,  she  was  frankly  selfish  and  despotic,  with 
the  '  noble  air,'  and  yet  immersed  in  subjects  for  their  own 
sake.  There  were  other  differences.  Mrs.  Piozzi  had  in- 
fatuations rather  than  passions  ;  she  was  not,  like  so  many 
of  these  Frenchwomen,  cleansed  by  fire.  Nor  was  she 
redeemed  by  failure.  All  her  powers  were  available  ;  there 
was  nothing  she  could  not  get  at ;  no  reserve,  no  shadow 
of  mystery  to  temper  the  daylight.     Her  waters  ran  wide, 


262  NEW  AND  OLD 

not  deep,  and  they  were  so  lucid  that  every  pebble  was 
visible.     This  kind  of  fluency  robs  her  amusing  utterances 
on  politics — and  these  letters  are  full  of  them — of  any  arrest- 
ing force  ;     they  make  a  pleasant  trickle,   but  no  more. 
'  Piety   and   business,'   she   writes,   concerning  grief,    '  will 
effect  in  a  month  what  the  other  two  (talents  and  literature) 
could  not  perform  in  a  year.'     The  sentence  only  shows 
that  its  author  could  not  have  been  as  literary  as  she  seems. 
No  Frenchwoman  would  have  been  so  little  of  an  artist  as 
to  write  it.     True  Briton  that  she  was,  Mrs.  Piozzi  judged 
literature  by  its  usefulness — by  the  moral  dividends  that 
it  brought  her.     The  moralising  busy  bee  is,  for  good  or 
ill,  confined  to  this  island,  unless  we  except  Madame  de 
Genlis,  whose  precepts  were  so  much  ever-seasoned  by  her 
practice. 

But  it  was  no  doubt  the  buzz  and  the  carefully  manu- 
factured honey  that  gained  Mrs.  Piozzi  such  prestige  in  her 
generation.  Neither  as  Mrs.  Thrale  nor  later  had  she  the 
foibles  easily  found  out — at  least  by  men.  Her  vices 
blossomed.  Boswell  lost  his  chance  and  proved  his  stupidity. 
He  never  blamed  her  rightly  ;  only  for  such  unimportant 
things  as  Johnson  condemned — her  inaccuracies,  her 
exaggerations,  and  the  like.  Boswell's  eyes  were  too  much 
coloured  by  jealousy  to  see  the  truth.  Yet  it  could  not 
have  been  merely  for  her  sprightliness  and  kind  attentions 
that  Johnson  loved  her.  His  heart  was  too  deep  to  live 
closely  for  twenty  years  on  such  thin  nourishment.  His 
need  of  love  and  of  family  life  told  for  much.  And  he 
depended  on  her  tact,  which  smoothed  his  spirit.  If  she 
had  been  there,  he  once  told  her,  Richardson  would  not 
have  died  :  '  that  fellow  died  merely  for  want  of  change 
among  his  flatterers.'  Her  flattery  was  that  of  discern- 
ment, which  drew  out  what  it  flattered.  And  then,  what- 
ever her  sentiments,  she  was  evidently  natural  in  her  manners, 
even  to  impulsiveness  ;    and  Johnson  prized  naturalness — 


HANNAH   MORE 

it  put  him  at  his  ease.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  while 
he  was  with  her  he  made  her  better  than  she  was. 

Never  [she  says  of  Dr.  Collier,  her  tutor]  have  I  failed 
remembering  him  with  a  preference  as  completely  distinct  from 
the  venerating  solicitude  which  hung  heavily  over  my  whole 
soul  whilst  connected  with  Dr.  Johnson,  as  it  was  from  the 
strong  connubial  duty  that  tied  my  every  thought  to  Mr. 
Thrale's  interest,  or  from  the  fervid  and  attractive  passion 
which  made  twenty  years  passed  in  Piozzi's  enchanting  society 
seem  like  a  happy  dream  of  twenty  hours. 

It  was  the  venerating  solicitude  which  did  her  good,  because 
it  was  '  venerating.'  It  produced  her  best,  and  the  '  twenty 
hours  '  of  enchantment  probably  produced  her  worst.    (1913.) 


HANNAH  MORE 

Hannah    More.     A   Biographical   Study.     By  Annette  M.   B. 
Meakin.     (Smith,  Elder.     14s.  net.) 

When  Hannah  More  was  a  little  child,  her  favourite  game 
was  to  sit  on  a  chair  and  pretend  that  she  was  riding  in 
her  carriage  to  London  to  '  see  Bishops  and  booksellers.' 
She  could  not  have  invented  a  better  epitome  of  her  life. 
Bishops  adored  her — she  incited  them  to  verse.  Bishop 
Lowth  addressed  lines  Hanae  Morae — Virgini  piae,  eleganti 
ingenio,  facundia  el  sapientia  pariter  illustri  .  .  .  '  Blow, 
blow,  my  summer  rose,  for  Hannah  More  will  soon  be  here,' 
so  another  sanguine  divine  urged  on  his  rose-bush  ;  while 
to  Bishop  Porteus  of  London  she  was  a  kind  of  Evangelical 
Egeria,  haunting  the  groves  of  Fulham  Palace.  It  was  the 
same  with  her  adversaries.  The  Vicar-General  of  the  Pope 
wrote  at  length  to  her,  deploring  her  injustice  towards  the 
Church  of  Rome.  She  replied  at  greater  length,  and,  lo  ! 
he  was  a  captive  at  her  chariot  wheels.     '  Beyond  every- 


264  NEW  AND  OLD 

thing  '  was  the  mildest  phrase  that  any  of  them  applied  to 
the  least  of  her  tracts  or  poems.  And  certainly  her  books 
sold  wonderfully.  That  brings  us  from  the  Bishops  to  the 
booksellers.  They  adored  her  too — for  financial  reasons. 
Her  success  in  England  and  America  was  bewildering  ;  the 
Rajah  of  Tan j ore  said  her  tracts  were  the  finest  works  he 
had  ever  read  ;  the  Cingalese  natives  acted  her  Sacred 
Dramas  in  Cingalese ;  Coelebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife  was 
found  in  Iceland — and  even  there  it  must  have  made  cold 
reading  ;  while,  as  for  the  works  of  her  mundane  days,  they 
were  almost  treated  like  those  of  Shakespeare.  When  her 
play  of  Percy  was  produced,  Fox  was  in  tears  ;  Lord  Lyttel- 
ton  came  to  see  it  every  night ;  a  certain  great  lady  of 
fashion  would  accept  no  invitations  excepting  on  condi- 
tion that  she  might  break  them  to  attend  performances  of 
it ;  Garrick  also  wept  when  he  read  it  aloud,  and  so  did 
Hannah  More  when  she  heard  him  ;  later  Mrs.  Siddons 
played  in  it ;  and,  to  crown  all,  '  the  blood  of  the  Percys,' 
as  she  tells  us,  called  in  the  name  of  the  family  to  thank 
her.  The  heroine  was  called  Elwina,  and  she  went  mad  : 
not  only  in  the  English  tongue  was  it  known  ;  the  drama 
was  acted  at  Vienna,  it  was  translated  into  French,  it 
brought  her  the  honour  of  becoming  a  member  of  the 
Academie  Francaise. 

No  less  effective  were  her  long  romantic  poems,  '  Sir 
Eldred  of  the  Bower'  and  'The  Bleeding  Rock.'  They 
caused  many  hearts  to  beat  faster.  Dr.  Johnson  was  fond 
of  reading  aloud  '  Sir  Eldred  ' — after  tea  ;  so  was  Garrick, 
who  was  strongly  affected  by  it.  '  The  Bleeding  Rock  '  was 
compared  to  Parnassus  by  Mrs.  Montagu,  and  exclaimed 
over  by  Wits  and  Bluestockings.  The  same  worldly  success 
followed  her  when  she  renounced  the  world.  From  the 
days  when  Wesley  reverenced  her  and  Wilberforce  chose 
her  as  his  helpmate,  to  those  when  she  spurred  on  Macaulay 
and  presented  Mr.  Gladstone,  aged  six,  with  a  copy  of  her 


HANNAH  MORE  265 

Sacred  Dramas,  she  sat  in  the  first  place  and  no  man  could 
have  bidden  her  go  up  higher.  Windsor  was  always  en- 
raptured by  her,  and,  indeed,  there  was  reason  for  enthu- 
siasm. She  did  magnificent  work,  and  she  did  it  in  spite 
of  bad  health.  Together  with  Raikcs  she  invented  Sunday 
schools  ;  she  also  (says  Miss  Meakin)  invented  tracts  as  a 
form  of  literature  ;  she  reformed  Cheddar,  which  when  she 
came  to  it  was  little  more  than  a  den  of  vice  and  poverty 
unspeakable.  This  was  no  easy  task  to  achieve  from  Bristol, 
especially  when  it  involved  tramps  of  ten  miles  round 
Cheddar,  from  hostile  squire  to  hostile  farmer,  to  conquer 
their  pig-headed  conviction  that  '  religion  was  bad  for  the 
poor.'  Not  only  here  did  she  succeed,  but  also  in  her  own 
neighbourhood,  where  a  district  notorious  for  the  many 
criminals'  it  provided  at  the  Assizes  failed,  after  a  few 
years  of  her  teaching,  to  produce  one  prisoner  at  the  bar. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  all,  we  never  love  her,  we  seldom  like 
her.  Lifelong  success,  it  is  true,  is  not  an  endearing  fact ; 
but  this  in  itself  is  not  enough  to  account  for  our  feeling. 
It  is  distressing  to  have  such  admiration  for  the  life  and 
such  distaste  for  the  liver.  Yet  we  do  not  set  out  with  this 
sentiment.  Few  could  help  enjoying  Hannah  in  her  brilliant 
youth — the  witty  Hannah  who  lived  with  the  Garricks,  and 
rallied  Horace  Walpole,  and  delighted  in  reading  Madame 
de  Sevigne,  and  herself  wrote  such  shrewd  and  sparkling 
letters  and  talked  with  so  much  pith  and  force.  There  must 
have  been  something  magnetic  about  the  woman  who  was 
Garrick's  close  friend,  his  '  dearest  Nine,'  and  was  no  less 
the  favourite  companion  of  his  wife  ;  to  whom  Walpole 
showed  his  finer  side  ;  who  was — chief  of  all  her  honours 
— beloved  of  Samuel  Johnson.  For  despite  his  reproof  of 
her  flattery,  of  which  too  much  has  been  made,  Johnson 
loved  her  and  sought  her  companionship.  He  approved  of 
her.  Her  taste  for  piety  had  been  known  to  bring  the  tears 
to  his  eyes  (it  was  when  he  found  her  reading  Pascal,  and 


266  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  tears,  it  must  be  owned,  followed  upon  a  scolding  for 
studying  a  Roman  Catholic  author) ;  the  shrewd  sense  that 
she  showed  and  the  absence  of  all  '  whining  over  meta- 
physical distresses  '  were  to  his  liking.  Perhaps  he  did 
not  admire  her  Muse  quite  as  much  as  she  thought,  and 
when  he  '  lamented  that  I  had  not  married  Chatterton,  that 
posterity  might  have  seen  a  propagation  of  poets,'  or  said 
to  one  who  uttered  the  word  poetry  in  her  presence,  '  Hush, 
hush  ;  it  is  dangerous  to  say  a  word  of  poetry  before  her  ; 
it  is  talking  of  the  art  of  war  before  Hannibal,'  he  knew 
that  she  was  impervious  to  irony.  But  these  things  were 
after  '  Sir  Eldred.'  Perhaps  he  had  read  it  once  too 
often. 

The  speedy  lapse  of  her  literary  reputation  is  most  com- 
prehensible. Such  a  fame  could  only  have  existed  in  an 
age  when  people  talked  of  geniuses  and  took  eloquent 
commonplaces  for  Jove's  thunderbolts.  '  How  unequally 
are  talents  distributed  in  this  world,'  wrote  one  of  her 
correspondents,  '  that  you  should  be  able  to  write  such 
verses,  knit  such  stockings,  and  make  such  aprons  !  '  Not 
only  the  verses  but  all  the  nineteen  volumes  of  her  works 
are  dead  and  buried — deeper  than  those  possessed  by  Mr. 
Birrell,  who  tells  us  that  he  dug  a  grave  for  them  on  the 
East  Coast — a  funereal  act  for  which,  by  the  bye,  Miss 
Meakin  bitterly  reproaches  him.  She  would  have  liked  the 
nineteen  for  the  London  Library,  which  does  not  own,  it 
appears,  a  complete  set.  The  fact  is  that  Miss  More's  success 
was  not  really  literary — it  was  social.  It  was  her  vigorous, 
effectual,  gifted  nature,  her  easy  efficiency  in  all  she  under- 
took, her  direct  and  epigrammatic  tongue,  her  Reason  and 
Affability— all  the  brilliant  outfit  of  a  power-loving  nature 
bent  upon  pleasing — that  gained  her  such  a  name  among 
men  of  books.  Her  qualities  were  just  those  to  make  good 
letters — and  she  wrote  them.  By  these  letters,  whether  de- 
scribing the  world  in  which  she  lived,  or  Madame  de  Sevigne 


HANNAH  MORE  267 

and  the  art  of  letter- writing,  or  Garrick's  funeral,  or  John- 
son's last  years  with  their  '  mild  radiancy  of  the  setting 
sun,'  she  should  and  will  be  remembered.  She  was  also  a 
keen  and  omnivorous  reader ;  but  she  could  not  read  for 
the  sake  of  reading— it  had  to  be  for  a  moral  purpose,  and 
she  condemned  the  author  if  she  did  not  get  what  she  wanted 
from  him.  Gibbon's  History  was  to  her  '  a  fine  but  insidious 
narrative  of  a  dull  period  ' ;  she  attempted  to  make  Boswcll 
pare  down  Johnson  into  an  example  of  Christian  amenity, 
which  drew  forth  from  Boswell  a  retort  as  rude  as  any  from 
his  master.  Her  talent  for  morals  kept  her  busy  and 
applauded  in  all  departments  of  life. 

It  is  the  applause  which  brings  us  back  to  our  problem. 
Hannah  More  never  could  give  up  success,  and  that  is  one 
of  the  reasons  why  we  cannot  wrhole-heartedly  admire  her. 
What  was  called  her  conversion  was  a  passing  from  one 
sphere  of  success  to  another.  There  are  twro  kinds  of  con- 
version, that  which  comes  from  conviction  of  sin  and  that 
which  comes  from  a  love  of  influence.  Hannah  More's 
conversion  belonged  to  the  second  sort.  She  did  not  really 
enjoy  herself  unless  she  was  reforming  somebody,  nor  did 
she  ever  enjoy  herself  as  thoroughly  as  when  she  had  a 
fashionable  rake  in  hand.  This  thirst  to  regenerate  was 
the  secret  of  her  excitement  over  Horace  Walpole ;  it 
was  really  a  form  of  flirtation  in  Sunday  dress,  and  safe 
to  pursue  alike  with  rich  and  poor,  with  those  in  the  cloth 
and  those  out  of  it.  Her  renunciation  of  her  dramatic 
success  at  its  height  was  certainly  a  fine  action  ;  but  it 
must  at  the  same  time  be  remembered  that  she  was  forty 
or  more  when  she  made  it,  that  she  knew  her  success  must 
wane,  that  she  transferred  her  gifts  to  a  region  better  suited 
to  middle  age,  that  she  made  her  sacrifices  full  in  the  market- 
place, and  continued  to  live  in  comfort.  She  could  not 
always  afford  to  be  sincere  with  herself.  Ever}7  party,  for 
instance,  to  which  she  wrent  in  middle  life  was  denounced 


268  NEW  AND  OLD 

by  her  for  its  banality,  its  rouge,  its  lack  of  real  conversa- 
tion ;  each  one  was  to  be  her  last.  But  as  long  as  oppor- 
tunity offered  she  never  gave  up  attending  them,  becomingly 
attired,  with  fresh  denunciations  upon  her  lips.  She  was, 
to  say  truth,  generally  dull  when  she  found  no  sin  to  observe  ; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  think  of  her  as  happy  in  heaven  with 
her  occupation  gone.  No  one  can  contradict  Mr.  Birrell 
when  he  says  she  was  self-satisfied  ;  she  was  only  technically 
humble,  and  perhaps  no  one  has  forgiven  her  enemies  with 
louder  noise  of  artillery.  What  salvos  of  pardon  were  let 
off  over  the  head  of  that  spoilt  child  of  the  Bluestockings, 
'  the  Poetic  Milkwoman,'  who,  drawn  from  her  right  sphere 
by  Hannah,  became  demoralised  and  turned  upon  her 
benefactress  !  But  the  benefactress  merely  retorted  with 
a  renewal  of  good  deeds,  taking  care  to  mention  them  in 
her  letters  to  Walpole.  In  all  this  Pharisaism  we  cannot 
help  suspecting  that  Hannah  More  had  only  benevolence 
where  she  should  have  had  a  heart.  She  was  the  feminine 
of  Godwin — a  Low  Church  Godwin.  Could  she  otherwise 
have  invented  the  cold-blooded  search  of  Coelebs  for  a 
wife  ?  And  had  she  really  felt,  could  she  have  written  as 
she  did  when  Horace  Walpole  died  ?  '  Twenty  years' 
unclouded  kindness  and  pleasant  correspondence,'  she  says, 
'  cannot  be  given  up  without  emotion.  I  am  not  sorry  now 
that  I  never  flinched  from  any  of  his  ridicule  or  attacks, 
or  suffered  them  to  pass  without  rebuke.' 

Hannah  More's  piety  was  eighteenth-century  rationalistic 
piety.  Dr.  Warburton  could  not  have  said  of  it,  as  he  did 
of  Bohmen's  works,  that  they  '  would  disgrace  Bedlam  at 
full  moon.'  Mysticism  was  double  Dutch  to  Hannah. 
Her  present  biographer,  however,  would  not  agree  with 
this.  She  makes  her  one  of  a  trio  together  with  St.  Augus- 
tine and  Tolstoi.  Yet  we  cannot  picture  either  of  these 
two  great  men  as  quite  at  his  ease  at  Cowslip  Green. 
Miss  Meakin  is  a  hero-worshipper.     It  is  perhaps  the  best 


THE  AGE  OF  LOUIS  XV  2fi9 

compliment  to  her  that  she  makes  us  think  so  much  of  her 
subject  as  to  forget  her  own  part  in  it.  She  has  read  and 
chosen  so  well,  put  together  so  good  a  picture  of  the  times, 
and  so  wisely  let  her  actors  speak  for  themselves  that  we 
should  like  to  add  that  she  is  a  good  writer.  Only  she  is 
not.  What  we  want  is  ease  of  style,  not  familiarity.  She 
should  not  call  Cowper  '  poor  fellow,'  or  imagine  what 
Macaulay  and  Hannah  would  have  been  like  as  man  and 
wife.  Nor  should  she  allude  to  Lady  Knutsford  as  the 
great-granddaughter  of  Zachary  Macaulay,  when  she  was 
his  granddaughter.  That  lady's  father  was  Sir  Charles, 
not  Sir  George,  Trevelyan  ;  and  Bentley  should  not  be 
substituted  for  Bentham  on  page  288.  And  she  should 
not  write  a  sentence  such  as  this  one  :  '  Hannah  More  was 
of  the  opinion  that  it  was  a  very  good  thing  for  young 
girls  to  read  Shakspeare  (selected).'  We  doubt  whether 
Shakespeare  would  have  recommended  young  girls  to  read 
the  works  of  Hannah  More  (even  selected).     (1911.) 


THE  AGE   OF  LOUIS   XV 

Journals  and  Memoirs  of  the  Marquis  d'Argenson.  Pub- 
lished from  the  autograph  MSS.  in  the  Library  of  the 
Louvre,  by  E.  J.  B.  Ratherv,  with  an  introduction  by 
C.  A.  Sainte-Beuve.  Translated  by  Katharine  Prescott 
Wormeley.     (Heinemann.     £2,  2s.  net.) 

'  Heart  excellent,  mind  less  good  than  the  heart ;  the  tongue 
worst  of  all ;  but,  as  for  the  latter,  it  is  only  a  habit.  My 
sister,  more  than  my  brother  or  myself,  is  made  in  that 
way.'  Such  is  the  Marquis  d'Argenson's  account  of  his 
family.  His  sister's  journals  would  have  been  spicy  read- 
ing, but,  in  their  absence,  his  own  give  us  food  enough  for 
meditation.  They  are  the  story  of  the  first  three-quarters 
of  Louis  xv.'s  reign,  and  French  history  can  hardly  show  a 


270  NEW  AND  OLD 

more  shameless  period.  Those  years  are  practically  the 
first  chapter — the  childhood,  as  it  were — of  the  monstrous 
French  Revolution,  and  d'Argenson  was  always  predict- 
ing it.  He  records  the  fierce  struggle  between  Crown  and 
Law  about  the  power  of  the  Clergy;  the  twelve  months' 
strike  of  Parliament,  during  which  time  it  refused  to  register 
the  Royal  decrees  ;  the  dignified  behaviour  of  its  members, 
who  abstained  all  that  year  from  appearing  in  the  theatres, 
as  a  sign  of  public  mourning  ;  the  almost  equally  long  strike 
of  the  Courts  of  Justice,  so  that  the  overcrowded  prisons 
engendered  an  epidemic  of  the  plague ;  the  final  victory 
and  reinstatement  of  Parliament ;  the  inarticulate  groans 
of  the  half-conscious  country-people  and  of  the  more  wide- 
awake Faubourg  Saint-Antoine,  even  then  a  dangerous 
district,  because  it  was  the  resort  of  '  small  workmen  '  who 
'  belonged  to  no  association.'  Or  there  was  the  combat 
between  the  Jesuits,  backed  by  the  Court,  and  the  Jansenists, 
backed  by  the  nation  ;  not  a  sincere  religious  quarrel,  as  it 
was  in  the  earnest  days  of  Port  Royal,  but  a  venomous  per- 
sonal cabal  full  of  clerical  animosity.  The  Jesuits  played 
the  worst  part ;  but  Pascal  and  the  great  Arnauld  would 
have  shuddered  at  the  Jansenists  of  Louis  xv.'s  reign.  The 
Grand  Style  had  disappeared  from  religion  as  well  as  from 
manners. 

It  was  necessary  for  the  indolent  King  to  give  himself 
over  to  the  influence  of  some  one  who  would  govern  for  him. 
The  State  was  ruled  first  by  the  shifty  Cardinal  de  Fleury, 
who  played  the  tyrant  for  seventeen  years  ;  then  by  Madame 
de  Pompadour,  who  killed  political  life  by  her  intrigues, 
and  commerce  by  her  demand  for  luxury.  There  was  no 
more  wheat  in  the  country ;  foreign  grain  was  exorbitant 
in  price ;  the  peasants  were  eating  grass — and  the  fact, 
so  well  known  through  Carlyle,  gets  new  force  when  we 
read  it  as  the  news  of  the  day  fresh  from  M.  d'Argenson's 
observation.     The  peasants  refused  to  marry  because  they 


THE  AGE  OF  LOUIS  XV  271 

would  not  bring  into  being  creatures  as  miserable  as  them- 
selves. Trade  had  stopped  and  silk-weavers  had  to  be 
kept  in  the  kingdom  by  force.  The  vintage  was  ruined  by 
devouring  hares — the  result  of  the  extension  of  the  nobles' 
game-preserves.  '  The  distance,'  says  d'Argenson, '  between 
the  capital  and  the  provinces  seems  to  increase  daily  ;  all 
goes  to  the  first,  nothing  returns  to  the  second.'  There  was 
no  money  but  in  Paris,  and  there,  when  the  King  drove 
through  the  streets,  the  people  pressed  round  the  carriage 
and  cried,  '  Misery  !  misery  !  Bread  !  bread  ! '  instead 
of  '  Vive  le  Roi  !  '  The  wages  of  the  royal  servants  had  not 
been  paid  for  three  years,  the  grooms  went  out  a-begging, 
and  there  came  a  moment  when  the  coachman  would  not 
drive  his  monarch.  Yet  when  there  was  an  attempt  upon 
his  life  all  that  the  Bien-Aime  asked  was  what  harm  he 
had  done  his  subjects.  The  handwriting  was  clear  upon 
the  wall,  but  the  King  could  not  read  it.  He  spent 
£2,720,000  in  pocket-money,  and  one  of  Madame  de  Pompa- 
dour's dresses  cost  £900. 

The  Marquis  d'Argenson  came  of  a  political  family.  His 
father  was  a  high  official,  his  brother,  the  Count  d'Argenson, 
one  of  the  most  important  of  the  Court  Ministers  and  one 
of  its  most  successful  worldlings.  His  son  was  as  prominent 
and  more  knavish.  He  himself  remained  consistently 
honest,  as  Intendant,  as  Councillor,  as  Minister  for  Foreign 
Affairs  ;  and  the  consequence  was  that  he  was  quickly  dis- 
missed after  two  years  of  office.  On  every  public  question 
he  showed  himself  a  constitutional  aristocrat.  He  would 
have  called  himself  a  democrat,  for  he  advocated  a  limited 
democracy.  Lafayette  would  have  loved  him  ;  de  Tocque- 
ville  would  have  found  much  to  say  to  him.  The  Due  de 
Richelieu  called  him  '  the  Secretary  of  State  of  the  Republic 
of  Plato.'  But,  for  all  that,  he  was  an  aristocrate  malgre  lui, 
and  he  clung  to  the  romance  of  a  Monarchy  in  France. 
For  Italy  he  wanted  a  Federal  Republic ;    he  was  ever  an 


272  NEW  AND  OLD 

enthusiast  for  tolerance  and  enlightenment ;  he  hated  the 
English  and  admired  their  methods.  On  all  points  he  had 
that  inspired  common  sense  which  often  distinguishes 
Frenchmen  and  makes  them  see  far,  if  not  always  deep,  into 
things.  He  knew  that  politics,  to  be  fine,  must  be  based 
on  regulated  enthusiasm,  and  that  when  they  are  founded 
on  animosity  they  are  bound  to  grow  rotten  at  the  core. 
He  knew,  also,  that  France  has  too  often  blundered  through 
confounding  government  and  administration.  The  French 
are  excellent  administrators — connoisseurs  of  detail — but 
bad  governors,  and  incapable  of  measuring  big  issues.  It  is 
this  absence  of  large  ideas  on  which  d'Argenson  constantly 
dwells  as  a  main  cause  of  the  evils  that  he  witnessed,  and 
he  thought  that  they  might  have  been  remedied  by  the 
creation  of  a  Prime  Minister  who  would  have  overruled 
the  Court  factions.  He  had  the  greatest  admiration  for 
Sir  Robert  Walpole,  who  '  has  to  manage  the  smallest  little 
King's  mind  that  ever  was  known.'  He  '  never  seems  busy 
yet  he  guides  all  .  .  .  knowing  well  the  middle  course 
between  authority  and  persuasion.' 

Meanwhile,  in  default  of  a  French  Walpole,  Madame  de 
Pompadour  acted  as  Prime  Minister.  She  was  called  '  the 
second  Cardinal,'  and  she  was  hated  even  more  than  the 
Cardinal  had  been.  The  only  one  of  Louis  xv.'s  mistresses 
who  had  political  importance,  she  kept  her  power  over  him 
for  a  surprising  length  of  time.  Like  all  lazy  people  he 
was  the  creature  of  habit,  and  long  after  love  was  over 
between  them  she  continued  to  play  the  part  of  his  plebeian 
Egeria  and  welcomed  all  things,  even  the  presence  of  her 
supplanters  at  Court,  in  order  to  keep  the  reins  in  her  hands. 
She  was  as  ambitious  as  Madame  de  Maintenon  and  better 
tempered  than  the  Montespan  ;  but  she  was  cruel  and 
ignorant,  with  the  cruelty  and  ignorance  of  the  parvenue 
who  shuts  her  ears  against  the  misery  of  the  class  from  which 
she  has  risen.      Sometimes  she  did  good  by  accident,  as 


THE  AGE  OF  LOUIS  XV  278 

when   she   espoused    the   cause   of  Jansenism   because   the 
Queen    loved    the   Jesuits.     D'Argenson    compares    her   to 
Anne    Boleyn,    the   Protestant   influence   in    Henry   viii.'s 
Court,  but  the  Englishwoman's  religion  was  less  of  a  cabal 
than    the    Frenchwoman's.     We    may    trust    d'Argenson's 
portrait  of  her,  for  in  all  his  character-studies — and  he  gives 
us  many — we  find  the  same  subtle  penetration  and  impartial 
shrewdness.     Of  the  Queen,  Marie  Leczinska,  he  gives  us  a 
curious  impression,  very  different  from  that  of  the  pathetic 
little    saint    to  which    the   sentimental    Saint-Amand    has 
accustomed   us.     D'Argenson's   Queen  is   a   sour,   bigoted 
Spanish  woman,  who  thought  it  behoved  her  to  assume  a 
haughty  air  with  the  King,  and  never  tried  to  attract  him. 
Mesdames,   her  daughters,   were  more  interesting.     There 
was  the  sweet  Princess  Henriette,  who  fell  in  love  with 
the  Due  de  Chartres  and  died  of  a  broken  heart  because, 
separated  from  her,  he  made  an  unhappy  marriage  ;  and  the 
eccentric  Madame  Adelaide,  who  behaved  like  a  despotic 
man,  but,  for  all  that,  sent  little  letters  to  one  of  her  father's 
guards  ;   and  the  timid  Madame  Sophie,  who  could  only  be 
polite   in   a   thunderstorm — from   terror ;     and   Mesdames 
Victoire  and  Louise,  of  whom  there  is  less  to  say.     These 
poor  ladies  and  the  Dauphin  fell  into  a  morbid  melancholy, 
caused  by  the  state  of  things  at  Court.     'They  dislike  seeing 
any  one,'  writes  d'Argenson,  '  and  never  speak  to  others  ; 
their  talk  is  of  death  and  catafalques  ;    they  amuse  them- 
selves by  playing  quadrille  in  their  dark  ante-chamber  by 
the  light  of  one  yellow  wax  candle  and  saying  to  one  another 
with  delight,  "  We  are  dead."  '     As  for  the  Queen,  she  went 
•  at  all  hours  to  see  "  la  Belle  Mignonne,"  '  that  is  to  say,  a 
death's-head.     '  She  declares  that  it  is  that  of  Mademoiselle 
Ninon  de  l'Enclos.     Several  of  the  Court  ladies  who  affect 
devotion  .  .  .  decorate  skulls  with  ribbons  and  head-dresses  ; 
they  illuminate  them  with  little  lamps  and  meditate  before 
them.'     The  decadent  are  much  alike  in  all  ages.     It  is  far 

s 


274  NEW  AND  OLD 

more  pleasing  to  turn  to  the  portrait  of  the  Young  Pretender, 
the  brilliant,  erratic  gallant,  who  loved  Paris  so  dearly  that 
Louis  xv.  had  to  arrest  and  deport  him  in  order  to  make 
him  leave  it  in  accordance  with  the  treaty  of  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
which  forbade  France  to  harbour  him.  Even  then  he  fell 
ill  at  Fontainebleau  and  returned  to  consciousness  with 
'  Paris  or  Paradise  !  '   on  his  lips. 

D'Argenson,  as  the  translator  of  these  memoirs  points 
out,  had  no  feeling  for  art,  nor  was  he  a  man  of  letters. 
He  read  books  to  get  ideas  ;  his  criticism  is  generally  moral 
criticism,  and  he  had  little  sense  of  literature.  Perhaps 
this  accounts  for  his  meagre  allusions  to  his  great  contem- 
poraries. 'Jean-Jacques  Rousseau,  of  Geneva,  an  agree- 
able author,  but  piquing  himself  on  philosophy,'  does  not 
seem  to  posterity  an  adequate  description  of  Jean-Jacques. 
Diderot  he  regarded  as  a  dangerous  little  pamphleteer. 
Voltaire  he  admired,  but  rather  as  a  thinker  than  an  author. 
Voltaire,  on  the  other  hand,  told  him  that  he  wrote  like 
Madame  de  Sevigne  and  ended  his  note  with  '  I  adore  you.' 
D'Argenson's  style  is  grave  and  intellectual,  not  brilliant. 
His  occasional  witticisms  and  good  stories  flash  forth  the 
more  clearly  for  their  sober  background.  Miss  Wormeley 
has  entered  into  his  mind  and  knows  well  how  to  render  his 
language.  But  why,  may  we  ask,  does  so  good  a  trans- 
lator make  such  obvious  mistakes  in  English  as  to  write 
'  relay  him,'  '  inspired  into,'  '  medium  '  for  '  moderate,'  and 
'  buckle  down  '  for  '  knuckle  under  '  ?  These  little  faults 
are  worth  correcting.  Sainte-Beuve's  introduction  to  the 
memoirs,  here  given  us  in  English,  needs  no  further  comment 
than  that  it  is  his  ;  while  the  many  portraits  in  the  book 
add  charm  to  its  store  of  information.     (1902.) 


MADAME  DUDEFF AND:  HORACE WALPOLE  275 


MADAME  DU  DEFFAND  AND  HORACE 

WALPOLE 

Lettres    de    la    Marquise    du   Deffand    a   Horace   Walpole. 
Mrs.  Paget  Tovnbee.     Three  volumes.     (Methuen.     63s.  net.) 

The  appearance  of  these  letters  from  Madame  du  Deffand  to 
Horace  Walpole  is  an  event ;  for  instead  of  the  353  letters 
which  have  hitherto  stood  as  the  sum-.total  left — and  only 
52  of  them  complete — we  have  before  us  three  thick 
volumes,  containing  838  letters,  and  all  but  six  of  them  are 
perfect.  Of  these,  485  have  never  seen  light,  besides  ten 
more  from  Madame  du  Deffand's  secretary,  Wiart,  written 
during  her  last  illness  and  afterwards.  Their  discovery 
was  a  thrilling  adventure,  which  for  once  fell  to  the  right 
person.  Mrs.  Paget  Toynbee,  whose  death  has  left  a  sad 
blank  in  the  world  of  literary  scholarship,  was  making 
researches  for  her  recent  edition  of  Horace  Walpole's 
correspondence  among  the  manuscripts  in  Mr.  Parker 
Jervis's  collection  in  Staffordshire,  when  she  came  upon 
these  precious  bundles,  unknown  to  their  owner,  tied  together 
anyhow,  and  long  forgotten.  Yet  there  is  no  mystery 
about  the  story  of  the  letters.  Miss  Berry,  Walpole's 
literary  executrix,  first  published  52  in  entirety  and  296 
in  part  in  her  edition  of  1810.  Prudence,  she  thought, 
forbade  her  to  print  more.  It  was  followed  by  French 
editions,  based  upon  it,  but  sadly  garbled,  in  1811,  1812, 
1S24,  and  1827.  After  that  there  was  no  fresh  edition  till, 
in  1859,  the  Marquis  de  St.  Aulaire  produced  one  with  five 
new  letters,  given  him  by  Miss  Berry,  who,  he  said,  had 
assured  him  that  all  the  rest  were  destroyed.  But  he  must 
have  blundered,  for  Miss  Berry  tells  us  in  her  journal  that 
they  were  safely  stowed  in  their  original  box  at  Strawberry 


276  NEW  AND  OLD 

Hill.  And  there  they  remained  till  the  seventh  Count 
Waldegrave  sold  them  to  Mr.  Dyce  Sombre.  It  was  at 
his  death,  in  1851,  that  they  passed  to  Mr.  Parker  Jervis. 
A  peculiarly  discreet  providence  hid  them  till  Mrs.  Toynbee 
found  them.  Her  notes  and  prefaces  alone  make  a  portrait 
gallery  of  eighteenth-century  Paris,  and,  fortunately,  she 
lived  to  finish  the  edition,  or  nearly  so.  The  little  which 
remained  to  do  has  been  done  as  she  would  have  had  it 
done  by  her  husband. 

We  most  of  us  know  that  Madame  du  Deff and  was  blind  and 
bitter  ;  that  she  wrote  to  Voltaire  and  entertained  Gibbon  ; 
that  she  turned  Mile,  de  Lespinasse,  her  '  companion,'  out 
of  doors  for  stealing  her  salon  behind  her  back ;  that,  at 
sixty-eight,  she  met  Horace  Walpole,  fell  in  love  with  him 
with  a  kind  of  amour  de  la  tete,  and,  though  she  saw  him  only 
at  intervals  of  several  years,  continued  to  write  to  him  till 
her  death  in  1780.  But  it  is  her  self  and  not  her  story  which 
is  the  interesting  part  of  her,  and  her  self  stands  revealed 
in  these  letters  of  an  old  woman  who  could  not  feel  old  and 
spent  her  age  in  all  the  discomfort  of  rowing  against  the 
tide.  Apart  from  her  wit,  this  self-will  always  keeps  her 
letters  fresh,  in  spite  of  the  established  place  that  they  fill 
on  the  shelf  of  eighteenth-century  classics.  They  are  almost 
as  well  known,  though  not  as  well  loved,  as  the  letters  of 
Madame  de  Sevigne,  that  dead  rival  in  the  art  of  correspond- 
ence and  in  the  literary  affections  of  Horace  Walpole  of  whom 
Madame  du  Deff  and  was  so  consistently  jealous.  Superficially 
the  two  great  ladies  were  the  exact  opposite  of  one  another, 
but  deeper  down  Madame  du  Deffand  had  many  points 
in  common  with  the  '  Sainte  de  Livry,'  as  she  called  her,  in 
genuine  admiration,  but  without  much  honey  on  her  lips. 
Both  were  Frenchwomen  first  and  women  afterwards  ; 
sincere,  terre  a  terre,  sceptical  philosophers,  with  vivid  per- 
ceptions instead  of  imaginations,  and  wits  delicately 
sharpened — mother- wits,     not    wits     cleverly    cultivated ; 


MADAME  DU  DEFFAND:  HORACE  WALPOLE  277 

with  incredible  quickness  and  powers  of  expression — the 
complete  equipment  of  the  true  critic,  in  whom  appreciation 
comes  first.  To  both  it  was  natural  to  live  in  the  moment, 
Madame  de  Sevigne  with  enjoyment,  Madame  du  Deffand 
with  endurance,  and  the  word  k  beyond  '  hardly  existed  for 
them.  Both,  too,  were  cynics  of  the  most  impregnable 
kind — born,  not  made  ;  seeing  things  as  they  are,  not  as 
they  might  be  ;  only  Madame  de  Sevigne  was  a  sunny  cynic, 
and  Madame  du  Deffand  a  complaining  one.  Ideas  and 
poetry  existed  for  neither,  except  as  matter  for  criticism. 
When  Madame  de  Sevigne  wished  to  swallow  Nicole's  theo- 
logical work  in  one  concentrated  bouillon  and  glowed  over 
contemporary  sermons,  we  suspect  it  was  more  for  their  style 
than,  as  she  thought,  for  their  religion  ;  while  the  more  low- 
spirited  Madame  du  Deffand  made  no  such  confusion,  and, 
belonging  to  an  age  which  was  frankly  irreligious,  she  found 
no  difficulty  in  proclaiming  that  style  it  was  which  always 
attracted  her.  And  both  were  epitomes  of  their  centuries — 
Madame  de  Sevigne  of  the  great  age  of  Louis  xiv.,  built  on  a 
generous  scale,  rich  in  experience,  warm-blooded,  dramatic, 
full  of  contrasts ;  an  age  which  was  officially  licentious  and 
rigidly  formal,  which  could  at  any  moment  produce  a 
splendid  saint  from  a  splendid  sinner.  Literature,  the 
Church,  crime,  everything,  even  the  basest  Court  intrigue, 
was  full  of  life.  No  one  was  tired,  and  the  least  tired  person 
in  the  world  was  Madame  de  Sevigne.  It  was  her  glory  that 
she  happened  herself  to  be  an  honndte  femme  ;  her  moral 
judgments  were  as  lax  and  gay  as  her  generation.  As  for 
her  faults,  they  were  of  her  temperament — summer  faults, 
born  and  bred  of  the  sun.  Madame  du  Deffand,  for  her  part, 
was  born  cold  and  tired,  of  a  cold  and  tired  time,  with  gaps 
in  her  nature  which  were  less  human  than  sins.  Louis  xv. 
was  no  Roi  Soleil,  and  there  was  little  fertilising  power  in 
the  atmosphere  which  surrounded  her  youth — no  big,  living 
tradition  of  art,  religion,  goodness,  or  badness.     There  were 


278  NEW  AND  OLD 

immense  wealth,  corruption,  vulgarity,  cabal  unredeemed 
by  excitement,  and  gallantry  without  passion  ;  there  was 
pleasure  grown  mortally  old  ;  in  short,  satiety,  with  all 
its  devices  to  fillip  jaded  appetites.  And  if  there  was  no 
great  art  or  literature,  there  was  society  ;  there  were  over- 
sharpened  intelligence  and  susceptibility,  unflagging  good 
talk  ;  while,  instead  of  the  philosophy  of  thought,  there  was 
the  other  lower  'philosophy,'  which  made  a  system  of  natural 
instinct  and  took  the  dry  light  of  concrete  knowledge  for 
the  dayspring.  The  fine  flower  of  this  decadence  was  the 
Encyclopedic ;  the  issue  was  the  French  Revolution. 

Into  this  sphere  of  satiety  and  brilliance  stepped,  born 
in  1697,  Marie  de  Vichy-Chamrond,  born  too  clever  to  take 
herself  or  others  seriously,  too  clever  not  to  see  through  her 
clever  world  ;  too  deficient  in  kindness  to  forgive  it,  or  do 
more  than  despise  it ;  too  much  of  it  to  do  without  it ;  too 
spiritually  blind  to  find  refuge  or  rudder ;  incapable  of 
living  alone  ;  too  sensitive  to  bear  close  companionship. 
This  lonely,  dependent  woman  believed  that  she  lived  by 
the  heart,  and  spent  her  whole  life  searching  for  one — for 
really  it  was  intellectual  stimulus  she  sought  to  cheer  her ; 
and  this  was  especially  so  later  on,  when  she  lived  in  that 
famous  tonneau  of  hers,  the  armchair  in  which,  a  rebel 
Diogene,  she  sat,  year  in,  year  out,  increasingly  blind  and 
helpless,  unpicking  old  materials  which  could  be  made  into 
suits  for  her  friends.  A  rebel  she  always  was.  When  she 
was  a  little  girl  at  school  in  a  convent,  she  proclaimed  such 
obstinate  heresies  that  her  aunt,  the  Duchesse  de  Luynes, 
sent  Massillon  himself  to  bring  her  back  to  the  fold.  The 
black  lambkin  owned  herself  to  have  been  impressed,  not 
by  his  arguments,  but  '  by  the  importance  of  the  arguer  '  ; 
and  Massillon  was  in  much  the  same  case.  All  he  said  when 
he  came  away  defeated  was,  '  Mais  qu'elle  est  jolie  !  '  For 
her  the  season  of  youth  was  soon  over.  At  twenty  she 
made  the  usual  manage  de  convenance  with  the  Marquis  du 


MADAME  DU  DEFFAND:  HORACE  WALPOLE  279 

Deffand,  but  he  bored  her  at  once  and  she  left  him  as  soon 
as  she  could.  Her  fortnight  of  intimacy  with  the  Regent 
was  probably  the  pretext  of  her  separation  from  her  husband. 
It  was  followed  by  other  transitory  gallantries,  and  then  she 
got  weary  of  them.  The  dust  remained  in  her  mouth  ;  but, 
though  she  was  never  honnctefemme,  she  developed  her  own 
sort  of  honour  and  settled  into  a  kind  of  immoral  respecta- 
bility. Her  connection  with  the  President  Henault,  which 
began  when  she  was  thirty-three,  lasted  for  forty  years  ;  and 
however  cold-blooded  her  manner  of  writing  of  his  decrepi- 
tude, her  conduct  showed  disinterested  devotion  and,  if  not 
loyalty,  at  least  fidelity.  She  hated  suffering,  yet  she  sat 
daily  by  the  doting  old  man's  bedside  ;  nor  did  she  grow 
impatient  with  the  gradually  deepening  melancholy  of  her 
other  old  habitue,  Pont  de  Veylc.  '  Pont  de  Vcyle,'  she 
said  to  him  one  day  towards  the  close  of:  his  life,  ' .  .  .  where 
are  you  ?  '  '  Madame,  in  your  chimney-corner.'  '  Your 
feet  on  the  fender,  as  you  should  have  them  in  an  old  friend's 
house  ?  '  '  Yes,  Madame.'  '  It  must  be  owned  that  there 
are  few  connections  as  long  as  ours  ;  .  .  .  fifty  years,  isn't 
it  ?  '  '  Fifty  years  and  more.'  '  And  not  one  little  cloud 
the  whole  time,  not  the  semblance  of  a  huff  ?  '  '  That  has 
always  been  my  pride.'  '  But,  Pont  de  Veyle,  don't  you 
think  that  may  be  because  at  bottom  we  have  always  been 
very  indifferent  to  one  another  ?  '  '  That  is  very  likely, 
Madame.'  And  yet  this  was  the  woman  who  wrote 
'  J'aime  l'amitie  a  la  folic.'  One  cannot  but  wonder  whether 
it  is  permissible  to  lead  a  purely  personal  life  without  a 
heart,  or  to  regard  friendship  as  an  investment  which  should 
bring  you  in  regular  dividends  of  intellectual  or  emotional 
distraction.  If  life  were  moral  and  one  wanted  a  proof  of 
the  folly  of  confounding  pleasure  and  happiness,  one  would 
find  it  in  this  unhappy  old  lady.  Pleasure  was  needful  to 
her ;  but  it  is  those  to  whom  the  world  is  necessary  who 
find  it  most  hollow  ;   and  it  was  just  when  she  was  perish- 


280  NEW  AND  OLD 

ing  of  ennui,  when  Pont  de  Veyle  had  died  and  Henault 
was  in  his  second  childhood,  that  Horace  Walpole  appeared 
on  the  scene. 

She  was  sixty-eight  and  he  was  fifty-two.     It  is  difficult 
to  account  for  the  excessive  fascination  that  he  had  for  her, 
or  to  gauge  the  secret  of  his  influence.     There  is  a  partial 
explanation  in  the  fact  that,  strange  though  it  may  seem, 
no  first-rate  man  had  ever  been  her  friend  or  even  dominated 
her  salon.  Madame  Geoffrin  had  had  Fontenelle  and  Montes- 
quieu ;    Madame    d'Epinay,   Rousseau ;    Madame    Necker, 
Gibbon.     Madame  du  Deffand  received  all  the  stars,  but  had 
only  second-rate  men  for  devotees.     It  may  have  been  her 
self-centred  view  of  life  and  her  bitter  tongue  which  kept 
sensitive  authors  and  the  best  talkers  from  intimacy.     And 
then  Horace  Walpole,  though  not  first-rate  or  weighty,  was 
effective.     He  had   a  good  deal  of  French  elegance  and 
quickness,  of  English  phlegm  and  reserve.     To  the  French 
he  figured  as  the  Englishman,  to  the  English  as  a  French- 
man.    And  the  Englishman  and  the  Frenchwoman  had  the 
same  kind  of  worldliness.     Like  her,  Walpole  would  have 
said,   '  Les  gens  du  monde,  quelque  peu  estimables  qu'ils 
soient,   sont  toujours  plus  amusants  que  d'autres.'     Like 
her,   too,   he  could   have  written,   '  Je  crains  tout  ce  qui 
m'attriste.'     Their  attachment  grew7  rapidly  and  unequally. 
He  wanted  amusement  and  got  it ;    she  wanted  emotion 
and  did  not  get  it.   Already  in  the  first  year  of  their  acquaint- 
ance, '  Je  dirai  sans  fatuite,'  she  wrote,  '  que  si  Ton  avait 
autant  de  discernement  que  moi,   vous  seriez  le  premier 
homme,  non  seulement  de  FAngleterre,  mais  de  l'univers.' 
And  later :    '  J'ai  une  sorte  de  crainte  et  de  respect  pour 
vous  qui  produit  de  tres-bons  effets,  et  vous  rendez  mon 
couchant  bien  plus  beau  et  plus  heureux  que  n'a  ete  mon 
midi  et  mon  levant.'     The  sunset  was  not  fine  for  long.     He 
had  more  than  the  average  Englishman's  horror  of  being 
absurd.     His  answers  become  a  tissue  first  of  cautious  and 


AT  A  DAME  DU  DEFFAND:  HORACE  WALPOLE  281 

then  of  insulting  scoldings  ;  she  is  not  to  call  him  '  my 
guardian,'  or  to  say  that  she  loves  him,  or  to  mention  the 
word  '  friendship,'  or  to  press  him  to  write  oftener.  If 
she  does,  he  will  break  off  their  intercourse.  Their  letters 
will  be  opened  in  the  post — he  is  stalked  by  fear.  And  she 
repents  abjectly,  implores  him  not  to  call  her  '  Madame,' 
rejoices  when  he  calls  her  '  ma  petite.'  Her  occasional 
flashes  of  temper  die  down  in  submission  ;  and  for  tins  we 
may  be  thankful,  for  he  compels  her  to  drop  emotion  and 
write  him  letters  on  other  topics  than  themselves  ;  and 
gradually,  especially  towards  her  end,  the  storms  subside. 
For  the  most  part,  we  can  judge  of  his  letters  only  by  her 
answers,  as,  at  his  urgent  request,  she  burned  those  written 
up  to  the  year  1778.  After  her  death  the  rest  were  sent 
to  him — indeed,  his  determination  to  get  them  back  seemed 
his  chief  thought  while  she  lay  dying.  He  kept  them  during 
his  lifetime — they  were  extant  in  1S70 — and  it  was  evidently 
Miss  Berry  who  destroyed  them.  By  a  lucky  accident  a 
few  escaped,  eighteen  in  all  (some  incomplete) :  and  of 
these  nine  whole  ones  and  two  fragments  are  here  published 
for  the  first  time.  Fear  generally  falls  over  its  own  feet. 
In  spite  of  his  precautions,  one  of  the  number,  a  drastic 
scolding  for  her  excessive  friendship,  throws  more  light  upon 
their  relationship  than  any  word  of  hers.  But  he  was  so 
nervous  of  her  eloquence  that  though,  as  a  literary  con- 
noisseur, he  kept  her  letters  and  probably  had  meant  to 
publish  a  chosen  few,  he  freely  used  penknife  and  scissors 
and  mutilated  them  as  he  pleased.  His  own,  in  spite  of 
her  enthusiasm,  are  not  good  samples  of  his  style.  Even 
she  rallies  him  on  his  bad  French  ;  he  is  hampered  by  a 
language  not  his  own  and  by  his  resolution  to  shine  in  it. 
He  is  always  rather  apt  to  think  more  of  the  way  in  which 
he  says  a  thing  than  of  the  thing  he  has  to  say,  and  to  make 
copy  out  of  life  ;  but  this  is  what  rendered  his  company 
easy  for  exhausted  nerves,  and  it  must  be  owned,  too,  that 


282  NEW  AND  OLD 

many  a  diamond,   spiritually  speaking,   shines  among  his 
eighteenth-century  shirt-frills. 

It  is  curious  to  find  how  one's  own  feeling  changes  as  one 
reads  on  in  these  volumes.     At  the  outset  our  sympathy  is 
with  the  pursued,  the  pursuer  seems  absurd  and  undignified  ; 
but  in  the  end  the  balance  of  dignity  lies  with  her  and  it 
is  the  pursued  who  seems  ridiculous.     She  gave  her  best, 
not  caring  what  men  said  of  her,  while  he  spent  his  time 
starting  at  shadows  and  trembling  before  public  opinion. 
She  must  have  been  terribly  trying  and  hyper-sensitive, 
but  he   should   have   found   some   more   generous   way   of 
rejecting  her,  and  it  was  hardly  fair  to  live  on  her  mind  and 
to  refuse  all  costs.     Then,  too,  our  sympathies  are  naturally 
with  the  person  who  suffers  most.     Madame  du  Deffand's 
moments  were  agreeable,   her  days   were  miserable  ;    her 
indifference    made    her   unhappy.     Horace    Walpole    knew 
nothing  but  the  moment,  and  enjoyed  his  indifference  ;    he 
was  the  typical  dilettante  of  his  period.     Their  real  bond 
was  their  good  taste,  and  it  probably  impoverished  their 
relationship    more    than    any    of    their    differences.     They 
were  tied  together  by  their  dislikes — a  corrosive  kind  of 
harmony  ;    but  her  unkindness  bites  deeper  into  life  than 
his  nibbling  ill-nature  ;  and,  though  hers  is  not  a  cri  du  cceur, 
it  is  at  least  a  cri  de  la  ttte.     The  letters  are,  however,  not 
all  bitter  or  quarrelsome.     He  is  sometimes  laudatory  and 
benevolent,  and  constantly  considerate  ;    he  watches  over 
her  symptoms,  directs  her  diet ;    in  spite  of  her  dislike  of 
presents,  they  exchange  books  and  exquisite  bibelots.     And 
her   accounts    of   her   swirling,    sparkling   world,    with   its 
tangle  of  suppers  and  politics,  Boufflers,  Luxembourgs,  and 
Mirepoix,    often  amuse  without   stinging,   especially  when 
she    touches    upon    the    young  Duehesse  de  Choiseul,  her 
grand? maman,  the  only  person  besides  Walpole  she  really 
cared  for.     Like  all  true  cynics,  she  loved  her  dog,  and  her 
pictures  of  '  Toutou  '  have  the  fragile  charm  of  a  Fragonard. 


MADAME  DU  DEEFAND:  HORACE  WALPOLE  283 

So  has  her  description  of  the  dressing  of  a  doll  for  a  gruid 
little  Mademoiselle  in  a  convent.  '  Son  trousseau  est  immerse ' 
(it  was  bought  by  Madame  de  Narbonne,  and  Choiseul,  the 
First  Minister,  gave  it  a  gold  and  enamel  watch) — '  cela 
sera  etale  lundi  sur  une  grande  table,  la  poupee  au  milieu 
assise  dans  son  fautcuil.' 

The  woman  to  whom  '  it  seemed  impossible  not  to  doubt 
of  everything  '  took  to  dolls  in  her  most  jaded  hours  :  at 
better  moments,  to  books  and  conversation.  To  conversa- 
tion rather  than  to  books  ;  books,  she  said,  '  forced  you  to 
listen  to  them,'  and  in  conversation  '  you  could  be  absent- 
minded,  nor  need  you  talk  long  on  the  same  subject.'  She 
grew  disgusted  with  books,  she  tells  us,  yet  she  '  never  left 
off  reading.'  Her  tastes  in  literature  were  as  personal  as 
her  views  of  life.  She  was,  she  writes,  like  the  gentleman 
who  said, '  Je  ne  m'interesse  qu'aux  choses  qui  me  regardent.' 
She  hated  histories  in  which  one  '  only  saw  kings  and  generals 
at  the  head  of  their  armies,'  by  authors  who  '  spoke  from 
the  pulpit '  and  '  were  delighted  with  the  beauty  of  their 
own  style  '  ;  she  could  not  bear  to  hear  the  crusades  or 
'  anything  like  them  '  mentioned  ;  she  disliked  any  wonder 
which  was  given  out  as  true  or  admirable  ;  she  '  loved  the 
Arabian  Nights  and  fairy  stories  and  some  novels — chiefly 
English  novels.'  '  J'y  trouve  des  longueurs  et  des  choses 
degoutantes,  mais  une  verite  dans  les  caracteres  .  .  .  qui 
me  fait  demeler  dans  moi-meme  mille  nuances  que 
je  ne  connais  pas.  Pourquoi  les  sentiments  naturels  ne 
seraient-ils  pas  vulgaires  ?  '  She  found  Tom  Jones  '  d'une 
verite  infinie,'  and  she  liked  the  fine  shades  of  common 
feelings  in  Richardson.  She  could  read  Gil  Bias  for  ever, 
because  '  la  facilite  du  style  est  ce  qui  fait  le  charme  de 
tout  ouvrage  et  le  fait  passer  a  la  posterite  ;  il  n'y  a  que  les 
livres  facilement  ecrits  qu'on  peut  relire  plus  d'une  fois. 
Temoin  les  lettres  de  Madame  de  Sevigne.'  '  J'aime  tous  les 
details  domestiques — j'aime  les  lettres  de  Racine  par  ce 


284  NEW  AND  OLD 

qu'elles  en  sont  pleines.  .  .  .  Dans  les  lettres  de  Madame  de 
Sevigne  c'est  un  des  articles  qui  me  plait  le  plus.'  Madame  du 
Deffand  was  haunted  by  Madame  de  Sevigne.  She  compares 
that  lady's  love  for  her  daughter  to  her  own  love  for  Walpole  ; 
she  rather  acidly  proclaims  her  own  inferiority  in  tender- 
ness, and  by  '  cent  mille  lieues  '  in  grace  and  wit.  '  Son 
esprit  n'etait  que  passion,  imagination  et  sentiment ;  elle 
ne  voyait  rien  avec  indifference  et  peignait  les  amours  de 
sa  jardiniere  avec  la  meme  chaleur  qu'elle  aurait  peint  celles 
de  Cleopatre.'  Her  comparison  of  Madame  de  Sevigne  with 
Madame  de  Maintenon  is  a  masterpiece  of  quickness  and  sim- 
plicity :  '  Je  persiste  a  trouver  que  cette  femme  n'etait 
point  fausse,  mais  elle  etait  seche,  austere,  insensible,  sans 
passion.  .  .  .  Ses  lettres  reflechies  .  .  .  d'un  style  fort  simple  ' ; 
while  in  those  of  Madame  de  Sevigne,  '  Tout  est  passion, 
tout  est  en  action  .  .  .  elle  prend  part  a  tout,  tout  l'affecte, 
tout  l'interesse  :  Madame  de  Maintenon,  tout  au  contraire, 
raconte  les  plus  grands  evenements,  oil  elle  jouait  un  role, 
avec  le  plus  parfait  sang-froid.  On  voit  qu'elle  n'aimait 
ni  le  Roi,  ni  ses  amis,  ni  ses  parents,  ni  meme  sa  place. 
Sans  sentiment,  sans  imagination,  elle  connait  la  valeur 
intrinsique  de  toutes  choses,  elle  s'ennuie  de  la  vie.' 

The  sins  that  Madame  du  Deffand  never  forgave  were  sins 
of  taste.  She  liked  modesty  as  much  as  she  despised  humility. 
'  Son  esprit,'  she  wrote  of  a  friend,  '  est  un  grand  instru- 
ment qu'elle  accorde  toujours  et  dont  elle  ne  joue  jamais.' 
As  for  false  modesty,  '  c'est  de  tous  les  genres  de  gloriole 
celle  qui  me  choque  le  plus  ;  j'aime  mieux  l'orgueil  a  decou- 
vert  que  celui  qui  a  le  masque  de  la  modestie.'  The  moral 
efforts  of  others  fatigued  her.  '  Nous  croyons  toujours  plus 
valoir  par  les  qualites  que  nous  acquerons  que  par  celles 
qui  nous  sont  naturelles,  et  nous  leur  donnons  du  prix  a 
proportion  de  ce  qu'elles  nous  coutent.'  Yet  often  she 
wearied  of  her  own  cleverness  and  would  have  been  glad 
to  see  less  clearly.     '  Trop  de  penetration  nuit  quelquefois  ; 


MADEMOISELLE  DE  LESPINASSE  285 

il  y  a  du  danger  a  trop  approfondir  ;  il  faut  le  plus  souvent 
s'en  tenir  aux  surfaces,  et  se  contentcr  d'y  conformer  les 
siennes.'  Unfortunately,  she  had  no  means  of  knowing  that 
it  was  more  insight  and  not  less  that  she  needed.  Madame 
du  Deffand's  chief  consolation  in  her  unhappiness  was  to 
remind  herself  that  she  was  not  married  to  M.  de  Jonzac. 
It  was  a  negative  consolation,  and  we  feel  that,  except  her 
wit,  all  the  good  points  in  her  life  were  negative.  Her  best 
quality,  perhaps,  was  her  inability  to  be  glib.  When  we 
put  down  her  Letters  we  feel  that  they  are  rather  inhuman, 
and  full  of  intimations  of  mortality.  But  they  are  not  the 
first  proof  the  world  has  had  of  the  gulf  that  lies  between 
the  word  '  mortal '  and  the  word  '  human.'  Madame  du 
Deffand's  correspondence  will  always  be  read  as  wit,  litera- 
ture, character-study  ;  but  the  best  letters — those  of  Swift, 
Cowper,  Lamb,  Byron,  Scott,  Joubert,  Madame  de  Sevigne 
herself — were  all  human  first  and  clever  afterwards.  That 
is  the  reason  of  their  immortal  hold  upon  us.     (1912.) 


MADEMOISELLE   DE  LESPINASSE 

Letters  of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse.  With  notes  on  her 
life  and  character,  and  an  introduction  by  C.  A.  Sainte- 
Beuve.  Translated  by  Katharine  Prescott  Wormeley. 
(Heinemann.     2 Is.  net.) 

One  day  in  1809  a  carriage  started  from  Chambery  to  Aix. 
It  contained  Madame  de  Stael,  Benjamin  Constant,  and 
two  friends.  A  thunderstorm  broke,  the  horses  stuck,  the 
travellers  were  endlessly  delayed,  but  not  one  of  them  was 
aware  of  the  fact.  For,  all  the  time,  Madame  de  Stael  was 
talking  about  the  letters  of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse  to 
M.  de  Guibert.  The  subject  was  worthy  of  Corinne.  That 
same  M.  de  Guibert,  long  after  Mademoiselle  had  died,  had 
been  her  own  first  lover.    And  a  less  fiery  party  than  this  was 


286  NEW  AND  OLD 

might  well  have  been  carried  away  by  the  topic  in  question. 
A  real  love-letter  is  not  easily  to  be  seen.  We  have  had 
enough  and  to  spare  of  fictitious  love-letters.  Of  such  as 
are  written  with  an  eye  round  the  corner  there  is  still  no 
dearth,  nor  are  examples  wanting  of  the  literary  kind,  in 
which  love  is  subservient  to  intellect.  But  real  love-letters 
are  seldom  literature,  and  it  is,  indeed,  a  merciful  dispensa- 
tion that  they  are  so  difficult  of  access.  It  is  the  more 
surprising,  therefore,  that  the  letters  of  Mademoiselle  de 
Lespinasse  should  be  both  literary  and  sincere,  that  they 
should  convince  our  hearts  while  they  satisfy  our  taste, 
and  this  although  they  fill  a  whole  volume.  No  one  would 
have  been  more  shocked  than  their  writer  at  the  notion 
of  seeing  them  in  print,  or  in  any  hands  but  those  of  the 
lover  whom  she  had  so  often  begged  in  vain  to  return  them. 
We  can  but  be  thankful  that  he  disobeyed  her.  For  her 
letters  remain  as  a  classic  of  passion — rather  monotonous, 
perhaps,  as  passion  is  apt  to  be,  but  instinct  with  life  and 
eloquence  and  a  kind  of  reckless  self-abandonment,  which 
has  its  own  royalty  about  it. 

To  understand  them,  however,  we  must  recall  her  strange 
story.  From  her  girlhood  upwards  she  had  been  appren- 
ticed to  suffering.  Born  in  1732,  she  was  the  illegitimate 
child  of  the  Comtesse  d'Albon,  but  early  in  her  existence 
she  lost  this  most  tender  mother,  who  had  not  even  time 
to  legitimise  her  birth.  The  little  girl  found  herself  a 
dependent  in  the  household  of  her  cruel  half-sister,  the 
Countess's  legitimate  daughter,  who  treated  her  young 
charge  like  Cinderella  and  made  her  life  a  burden  to  her. 
This  state  of  things  lasted  till  she  was  twenty-two,  and 
then  everything  changed  for  her.  Her  sister's  husband 
was  the  brother  of  the  Marquise  du  Deffand,  queen  of  the 
salons  of  Paris,  who  paid  his  house  occasional  visits.  She 
discovered  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse ;  she  fell  in  love, 
she  eloped  with  her.     Cinderella  was  transformed  into  a 


MADEMOISELLE  DE  LESPINASSE  287 

great  lady's  companion  and  fellow-hostess.  Madame  du 
Dcffand,  one  of  the  most  perplexing  characters  in  French 
memoirs,  was  at  this  time  fifty-seven.  She  was  almost 
blind ;  she  was  suspicious,  unhappy,  successful,  preter- 
naturally  clever.  With  all  the  appearance  of  a  heart  she 
did  not  possess  one,  and  though  she  had  many  susceptibilities 
she  had  no  feelings.  Almost  as  keen  a  literary  critic  as 
Voltaire,  she  lived  as  a  wit  among  wits,  and  she  found  her 
companion  an  apt  and  fastidious  pupil.  But  Mademoiselle 
de  Lespinasse  was  all  heart,  and  only  deficient  in  control 
over  it.  For  ten  years  all  went  well,  till  Madame  du  Dcffand 
found  out  that  her  subordinate  had  eclipsed  her,  that  all 
the  frequenters  of  her  salon  and  her  oldest  friends — the 
President  Renault,  M.  d'Alembert,  the  whole  Encyclo- 
paedia and  Academie,  together  with  several  of  their  Egerias 
— had  gone  over  to  the  younger  woman,  and  that  she  was 
even  receiving  them  secretly  in  her  own  apartment.  Madame 
fulminated  ;  she  practically  turned  out  her  broken  idol ; 
but  the  idol  only  removed  to  a  new  little  salon  round  the 
corner,  and  her  congregation  followed  her,  d'Alembert  in 
good  earnest,  for  he  soon  after  took  up  his  abode  there.  As 
for  the  forsaken  goddess,  she  never  forgave  the  offender. 

One  asks  oneself  what  was  the  charm  that  drew  all  these 
personages — women  as  much  as  men — to  Mademoiselle  de 
Lespinasse,  and  kept  them  by  her  side,  for  no  one  of  them 
seems  to  have  deserted  her.  It  was  not  beauty.  '  Her  face 
was  never  young,'  says  Grimm  ;  and  Guibert  himself,  who 
did  not  know  her  till  she  was  thirty-eight,  tells  us  that  '  she 
was  far  from  beautiful,  and  her  features  were  still  further 
marred  by  the  smallpox  ;  but  her  plainness  had  nothing 
repulsive  at  the  first  glance  ;  at  the  second  the  eye  grew 
accvistomed  to  it,  and  as  soon  as  she  spoke  it  was  forgotten. 
She  was  tall  and  well  made  .  .  .  and  her  figure  was  still 
noble  and  full  of  grace.'  Her  charm  lay  wholly  in  the  heart 
and  in  the  mind,  and  in  her  power  of  expressing  them. 


288  NEW  AND  OLD 

'  What  distinguishes  you  above  all  in  society  is  the  art  of 
saying  to  each  one  that  which  suits  him  ;  and  this  art, 
though  little  common,  is  very  simple  in  you  ;  it  consists  of 
never  speaking  of  yourself  to  others,  but  much  of  them.' 
So  wrote  d'Alembert,  and  Guibert  was  not  behind  him : — 
'  She  forgot  herself  perpetually.  She  was  the  soul  of  a 
conversation.  He;-  great  art  lay  in  showing  the  minds  of 
others  to  advantage.'  Her  wit  was  rather  sober  than 
brilliant — the  kind  of  wit  which  is  in  itself  an  act  of  hospi- 
tality. '  Her  circle  met  daily  from  5  o'clock  until  9  in 
the  evening.'  Every  person  of  distinction  went  to  her 
house,  and  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  affairs  of 
the  Academie  were  settled  there.  Her  company  was  so 
well  assorted  that,  '  once  there  [says  Marmontel],  they 
fell  into  harmony  like  the  strings  of  an  instrument  touched 
by  an  able  hand.  .  .  .  She  seemed  to  know  what  tone  each 
string  would  yield  before  she  touched  it.  .  .  .  It  was  a 
rare  phenomenon  .  .  .  the  degree  of  tempered,  equable 
heat  which  she  knew  so  well  how  to  maintain.'  Had  she 
depended  on  those  who  adored  her,  she  would  have  been  a 
happy  woman. 

It  was  between  1760  and  1776  that  the  drama  of  her  life 
was  played.  There  were  three  chief  actors  besides  herself — 
d'Alembert,  who  loved  her  only  and  whom  she  never  loved, 
though,  for  sixteen  years,  he  lived  with  her  on  terms  of  friend- 
ship; M.  de  Mora,  her  passionate  lover,  who  died  of  consump- 
tion away  from  her,  seven  years  after  they  first  met ;  and 
M.  de  Guibert,  who  never  loved  her,  but  who  swept  her  off  her 
feet  with  an  overmastering  passion  for  him  from  the  day 
she  first  met  him  in  1772,  a  year  before  M.  de  Mora's  death, 
to  the  day,  in  1776,  when  she  died  of  a  broken  heart.  For  a 
short  space  she  was  M.  de  Guibert's  mistress,  but  for  the 
most  part  her  letters  are  but  cries  of  mortally  wounded 
passion,  or  answers  to  others  from  him  telling  her  he  did 
not  love  her.     When  he  married  she  sympathised  and  went 


MADEMOISELLE  DE  LESPINASSE  289 

on  as  before,  because  she  thought  he  had  made  a  mere 
mariage  de  convenance  ;  and  when  she  found  out  the  truth — 
that  he  had  loved  his  wife  for  a  year  before  he  had  married 
hei — she  died  of  it.  If  we  took  the  bare  outline  of  hi  c 
history,  she  would  merely  figure  as  an  absolute,  a  classical, 
jilt ;  but  this  is  far  from  being  the  case.  It  must  first  be 
remembered  that  her  birth  barred  her  marriage  with  any 
man  at  all  her  equal ;  next  (and  this  is  more  to  the  poinl ) 
that  she  was  always  governed  by  an  insatiable  besoin  de 
plaire.  Her  adoring  d'Alembert  told  her  so  in  the  frank 
'  character '  which  he  wrote  of  her,  and  none  knew  better 
than  he  that  this  vanity  of  sentiment  led  her  any  length. 
She  even  told  him  that  '  she  hardly  dared  think  of  the 
happiness  it  was  to  be  with  him,'  at  a  moment  when  she 
was  dying  of  her  passion  for  another  man,  and  crying  out 
every  day,  with  unmistakable  sincerity,  that  she  prayed  to 
be  delivered  from  '  the  slow  and  painful  malady  called  life.' 
The  fact  was  that  she  could  not  keep  her  heart  off  any- 
body who  came  within  measurable  distance  of  her,  and  she 
would  take  any  trouble  for  each  one  of  them.  It  was 
nothing  but  tins  need  to  please  that  had  made  her  seem 
untrue  to  Madame  du  Deffand  ;  no  one  was  in  reality  so 
free  from  calculation,  from  coquetry,  from  all  the  colder 
qualities  ;  and  what  looked  like  falsehood  in  her  was  only 
her  power  of  loving  many  people  in  different  ways.  '  I 
am  merely  a  good  creature,'  she  writes,  '  very  stupid,  very 
simple,  who  loves  the  happiness  and  pleasure  of  those  I 
love  better  than  what  is  mine  or  for  me.  ...  I  have  even 
less  indifference  than  vanity.  But  I  have  a  strength  or  a 
faculty  which  renders  me  able  for  all ;  it  is  that  of  knowing 
how  to  suffer.'  What  people  write  of  themselves  is  seldom 
quite  true,  and  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse  knew  that  she 
never  was  stupid  and  very  seldom  simple.  But  she  was 
right  about  the  rest,  and  her  '  faculty  '  made  the  unhappi- 
ness  of  three  people,  to  all  of  whom  she  really  was  sincere. 

T 


290  NEW  AND  OLD 

For  M.  de  Mora  her  flame  was  purely  emotional,  drawn  forth 
by  this  child  of  the  south,  and  fed  by  its  own  poetic  force. 
But  for  M.  de  Guibert  her  passion  was  both  more  primitive 
and   more    complicated.     Her   fastidious   mind,    her   intel- 
lectual ambitions  were  in  it.     Guibert  was  one  of  those  men 
of  whom  his  contemporaries  expect  everything — a  meteor 
that  flashes  across  its  age  and  then  falls  forgotten  to  the 
earth.     He    was    a    distinguished    soldier,    a    dramatist,    a 
striking  writer  on  tactics.     Besides  that,  he  had  a  magnetic 
personality.     There    is    something    disagreeably    mesmeric 
in  her  whole  relation  to  him.     She  felt  that  he  was  her  fate  ; 
she  loved  him  against  her  will.     At  times  she  hated  him 
bitterly,    and    she    struggled    against   his    ice-cold    power. 
4  Why  did  you  not  leave  me  in  repose  ? '  she  cried.  .  .  . 
'  Either  fill  my  soul  or  torture  it  no  longer.  .  .  .  You  have 
made   me   feel   the   tortures   of   the   damned,   repentance, 
hatred,  jealousy,  remorse,  contempt  of  myself  and  some- 
times of  you.'     These  accesses  of  remorse  began  before  the 
death  of  Mora,  whom  she  told  of  her  new  friendship,  though 
he  died  unconscious  of  its  extent.     But  after  his  death  her 
moral  torment  grew  incessant.     She  was  too  good  to  feel 
otherwise.     There  were,  she  said,  but  three  anodynes  for 
her  pain — the  first  was  M.  de  Guibert ;    the  second  was 
opium  ;    the  third  was  music  ;   and  this  meant  the  music  of 
Gluck's  Orfeo,  which  turned  her  sorrow  into  ecstasy.     But, 
unfortunately,  it  was  only  the  opium  which  took  effect. 

Her  letters  run  through  the  whole  gamut  of  feeling. 
Brevity  is  the  soul  of  passion  as  well  as  of  wit,  and  no  one 
is  terser  than  she  can  be.  '  A  soul  that  has  loved  him  best,' 
she  writes,  '  has  the  greatest  need  of  extinction  for  ever.' 
Or  take  this,  one  of  her  daily  notes  to  him  : 

At  all  the  instants  of  my  life,  1774. 
Mon  ami — I  suifer,  I  love  you,  and  I  await  you. 

Sainte-Beuve  (who  also  quotes  these  words  in  his  admirable 
Introduction  to  her  letters)  says  that  her  existence  was 


MADEMOISELLE  DE  LESPINASSE  291 

'  passed  in  loving,  hating,  fainting,  reviving — that  is  to  say, 
in  ever  loving.'     It  is  impossible  here  to  chronicle  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  her  feelings — we  must  restrict  ourselves  to  their 
effect  upon  her  character.     This  was,  in  some  ways,  ennob- 
ling.    '  Nearly  all  who  exist  love  only  because  they  are 
loved.     Ah,  mon  Dieu  !     What  a  poor  way  !     How  small 
and  feeble  it  leaves  the  soul !  '  she  writes.     She  was  fervent 
by  conviction,  not  by  impulse,  and  she  hated  reason — '  the 
temperate  zone  in  which  live  all  the  fools  and  the  automa- 
tons.'   But  though  she  called  self-restraint '  dull  courage,'  she 
practised  her  own  sort  of  renunciation.     For  true  passion  is 
austere — a  cloistral  discipline  as  well  as  a  self-indulgence. 
No  form  of  asceticism  could   more  rigorously   reject  the 
common  pleasures  of  life  ;  it  is  the  most  unworldly  and  the 
least  conventional  of  influences.    Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse 
hated  distractions.     To  be  with  M.  de  Guibert,  or  alone, '  but 
alone  without  books,  without  lights,  without  noise,'  these  were 
the  only  two  modes  of  life  possible  to  her.     The  narrower 
the  bed  the  more  vehement  the  stream,  and  she  grew  very 
narrow.     '  It  is  dreadful  to  live  to  one  point,'  she  owned,  and, 
indeed,  her  love  became  a  fixed  idea.    The  result  for  her  mind 
was  a  bad  one.     Her  fastidious  taste  naturally  inclined  her  to 
scorn,  and  isolation  increased  this  tendency.     Yet  she  was 
born  a  woman  of  many  interests,  a  wide  reader,  a  delicate 
critic.     She  knew  alike  her  Montaigne  and  her  Marivaux  ; 
she  relished  Richardson  and  Sterne.     It  was  she  who  made 
the  reputation  of  the  Sentimental  Journey  in  France,  and 
she  liked   Lord   Shelburne   because   he   '  adored '   Yorick. 
She  nearly  went  to  stay  with  him  in  England  on  this  account, 
and  also  because  he  was  a  leader  of  the  Opposition.     She 
is  fond  of  dwelling  on  her  contempt  for  French  methods  of 
government.     '  Nothing   but   Voltaire's   fame    could   have 
consoled  me  for  not  having  been  born  an  Englishman,'  she 
cries.     Her  power  of  penetration  is  like  a  light  sword,  flash- 
ing, piercing,  wounding,  and,  in  a  breath,  back  again  in  the 


292  NEW  AND  OLD 

scabbard  ;  and  she  exercises  her  skill  on  everybody,  not 
excepting  herself  and  M.  de  Guibert.  '  I  am  loved  because 
others  believe  and  see  that  they  are  making  an  effect  on 
me,'  she  says, '  and  not  because  of  the  effect  I  make  on  them.' 
And,  as  for  Guibert,  '  you  are  made  expressly  to  enjoy  much 
and  suffer  little,'  she  writes.  '  You  have  tastes  and  no 
passions  ;  you  have  soul  and  no  character.  .  .  .  The  differ- 
ence in  our  affections  is  this — you  are  calm  enough  to  enjoy 
everything ;  while  I  am  in  Paris,  I  suffer  and  I  enjoy  nothing ; 
"  that  is  all,"  as  Marivaux  says.' 

It  is  a  matter  for  regret  that  her  passion  did  not  oftener 
allow  her  to  vary  her  themes.  Her  criticisms  of  books  and 
business  are  direct  and  subtle  ;  even  her  haphazard  remarks 
show  a  kind  of  inspired  shrewdness  and  indicate  the  hand 
of  the  intaglio-cutter  which  carves  common  sense  into 
aphorisms.  If  you  turn  over  her  letters  at  random  it  is 
not  difficult  to  find  a  dozen  such  happy  phrases.  '  Paris  ' 
(she  says  in  one  note)  '  is  the  place  in  the  world  where  one 
can  be  poor  with  the  least  privations  ;  none  but  fools  and 
tiresome  people  need  to  be  rich.'  And,  in  another, '  Marriage 
is  a  veritable  extinguisher  of  all  that  is  great  and  may  be 
dazzling.  .  .  .  There  are  men  destined  by  Nature  to  be 
great  and  not  happy.'  Habit,  as  a  tie,  she  despises  ;  '  it 
is,'  she  says,  '  the  sentiment  of  those  who  have  none,'  the 
'  souls  of  papier-mache,'  as  she  elsewhere  calls  them.  The 
'  public  of  the  moment '  she  despises  even  more,  since  it 
'  never  has  the  taste  nor  the  intelligence  which  sets  the  seal 
on  what  should  go  down  to  posterity.'  Sometimes  she 
indulges  in  a  bitter  grace  of  her  own — in  ironical  little 
pirouettes  of  tongue  that  none  but  a  woman  could  make. 
'  She  has  nothing  to  do  with  loving — she  is  too  charming,' 
such  was  her  verdict  on  Madame  de  Boufflers.  And  she 
enjoys  mocking  M.  de  Guibert,  who  is  always  persuading 
her  to  be  calm.  '  Mon  ami,''  she  writes,  '  except  in  one 
point,  let  us  always  be  reasonable  and  moderate.'     But 


A  KEEPER  OF  ROYAL  SECRETS    29:5 

Iiumour  and  passion  are  mortal  foes,  and  Mademoiselle  dc 
Lespinasse's  epigrams  are  oftener  pathetic  than  playful. 
'  In  approaching  those  who  suffer,  those  who  are  unhappy, 
the  first  question  asked  should  be,  "  Do  you  sleep  ?  '  The 
second,  "  How  old  are  you  ?  "  ' — this  contains  a  world  of 
experience. 

There  was  one  quality  nothing  could  take  from  lliis 
tragic  lady,  and  that  was  her  practical  kindliness.  '  The 
human  species  is  not  wicked,  it  is  only  silly,'  was  her  not 
too  respectful  summary  of  her  fellows,  but  her  deeds  were 
more  charitable  than  her  speech.  No  promised  visit  from 
Guibert  would  ever  prevent  her  from  keeping  a  promise  to 
sit  with  a  sick  friend,  and  she  helped  with  both  hands  if  any 
distress  came  her  way.  We  in  England  have  no  women  to 
compare  her  with,  unless  it  be  Esther  Vanhomrigh  ;  but 
Swift's  victim  left  no  letters  behind  her,  and,  even  if  she 
had,  she  would  not  have  expressed  herself  like  the  French- 
woman. Passion  makes  the  strongest  people  weak  and 
the  weakest  people  strong  ;  but  those  who  have  it  '  are 
endowed  with  the  sixth  sense,  soul.'  The  words  are  the 
words  of  Mademoiselle  de  Lespinasse,  and  they  might  stand 
in  her  epitaph.     (1902.) 


A   KEEPER   OF   ROYAL   SECRETS 

A  Keeper  of  Royal  Secrets,  being  the  Private  and  Political 
Life  of  Madame  de  Genlis.  By  Jean  Harmand.  With  a 
Preface  by  Emile  Faguet.     (Nash.     15s.  net.) 

Felicite  Stephanie  de  Genlis,  comtesse,  adventuress, 
governess,  copious  writer  of  novels,  plays,  and  homilies, 
needed  a  biographer,  and  M.  Jean  Harmand  has  adequately 
supplied  the  want.  We  imagine  from  the  rather  faulty 
English  that  he  has  been  his  own  translator,  but  the  occa- 
sional mistakes  and  stiff  sentences  help  far  more  than  a 


294  NEW  AND  OLD 

better  translation  to  give  us  the  atmosphere  of  France. 
M.  Harmand's  biography  is  of  the  judicial  kind  ;  he  neither 
loves  nor  hates,  and  so  his  record  lacks  the  warmth  which 
makes  the  reader  one  with  the  subject.  We  stand  outside 
and  are  amused.  What  manner  of  woman  does  he  paint 
for  us  ? 

If  we  could  imagine  Harriet  Martineau  improper,  Becky 
Sharp  literary,  Miss  Edge  worth  intriguing,  we  should  get 
something  like  a  true  impression  of  Madame  de  Genlis.  When 
we  think  of  her  as  the  adventuress,  we  are  pulled  up  by  the 
governess  ;    while  we  contemplate  her  immorality,  we  are 
baffled  by  her  virtue  ;    and  as  we  shrink  from  her  worldli- 
ness,  we  are  confronted  by  her  disinterested  actions.     Yet 
to  all  these  seeming  paradoxes  there    is   one  clue  which 
explains  them — the  key  to  her  character,  and  that  clue  is 
her  boundless  love  of  influence.     To  this  love  all  her  faculties 
were  subservient.     She  had  no  natural  taste  for  impro- 
priety.    Her  irregularities  were  but  assets  on  the  road  to 
power,  and  directly  she  could  afford  to  be  moral  she  sank 
into  the  respectability  that  was  natural  to  her  prudent 
temperament.     Her  virtue,  her  money,  her  generosity,  she 
used  in  the  same  fashion;  they  had  no  intrinsic  value  for 
her,  they  were  but  means  to  an  end.     Thus  it  was  that  in 
spite  of  dreadful  poverty  she  had  no  real  love  of  money  and 
was  never  purely  mercenary  ;    nor  was  it  more  than  an 
accident  that,  while  investing  virtue  at  a  pretty  high  per- 
centage, she  grew  to  like  it  and  ended  by  identifying  herself 
with  the  cause  of  religion  and  domesticity.     In  making 
for  moral  effects  and  posing  as  the  adversary  of  the  Ency- 
clopaedists, she  acquired  the  principles  she  professed  and 
preached  them  sincerely.    And  her  very  endowments  blended 
with  her  appetite  for  power.     Her  piquant  beauty,  her  quick 
grace,   the  insatiable  appetite  for  knowledge  which   pos- 
sessed her  from  youth  onwards,  even  in  the  most  tawdry 
phases  of  her  existence,  her  facility  in  writing,  her  accom- 


A  KEEPER  OF  ROYAL  SECRETS  295 

plishments,  her  genius  for  private  theatricals — on  the  stage 
and  off  it — all  helped  her  to  dominate  as  she  desired.  But 
these  were  minor  talents.  Her  greatest,  most  original, 
faculty — that  which  gives  permanence  to  her  name — her 
remarkable  gift  for  education,  was  only  part  of  her  deter- 
mination to  rule.  When  she  became  the  governess  of  the 
Orleans  princesses  she  found  her  vocation  ;  and  when  their 
father,  Philippe  Egalite,  discarded  all  precedent  and  ap* 
pointed  her  as  Gouverneur  of  his  sons,  she  found  her  throne 
— and  revealed  her  weakness.  The  benevolent  tyranny 
which  divorced  the  children  from  their  mother  (her  own 
great  benefactress)  and  kept  them  wholly  for  herself,  was 
a  crime  far  worse  than  her  connection  of  twenty  years  with 
Egalite :  a  beautiful  pedagogue's  connection,  a  training  of 
her  lover  for  the  State,  rather  like  the  relationship  of  Diane 
de  Poitiers  to  Henri  n.  But  Diane  was  more  generous,  or 
less  potent,  than  Madame  de  Genlis,  for  after  early  childhood 
Henri's  children  returned  to  his  wife.  It  was  unfortunate  for 
the  more  modern  despot  that  Diane  de  Poitiers  and  Madame 
de  Maintenon — the  great  bad  examples  for  governesses- 
should  have  existed  before  her.  In  her  case  no  rivalry 
of  any  sort  was  allowed,  and  Bellechasse,  where  she  lived 
with  her  pupils,  was  soon  made  too  uncomfortable  to  hold 
other  teachers  of  any  importance. 

Yet  with  this  greed  was  mingled  the  genuine  devotion  of 
the  educationist,  and  something  more,  perhaps  inseparable 
from  it,  a  rare  love  of  children  and  a  need  of  them  about 
her.  Long  after  she  had  ceased  to  be  a  governess  she 
adopted  plebeian  waifs  and  strays — contracted,  indeed,  an 
almost  pernicious  habit  of  adoption  ;  pinched,  struggled, 
suffered  for  them,  idealised  them,  founded  their  fortunes, 
and  got  scant  returns.  For  the  sad  thing  is  that,  while  in 
children  she  inspired  an  almost  morbid  cult,  in  later  life 
hardly  one  of  her  charges  seemed  to  care  for  her.  Made- 
moiselle Adelaide,  who  as  a  girl  grew  ill  at  the  thought  of 


296  NEW  AND  OLD 

separation,  never  really  renewed  their  companionship, 
although  for  a  time,  on  her  return  to  Paris,  she  again  fell 
under  her  sway.  Pamela,  the  mysterious  little  girl  from 
England,  brought  up  with  the  Orleans  nurslings,  after- 
wards refused  to  live  with  her  ;  yet  Pamela  was  generally 
believed  to  be  her  own  child  and  to  own  Philippe  Egalite 
as  father ;  and  the  same  was  reported  of  Hermine,  who 
came  with  Pamela  and  also  inhabited  the  Bellechasse  school- 
room. As  for  the  Due  de  Chartres,  after  his  father's  death, 
when  he  learned  Madame  de  Genlis's  true  relation  to  Egalite, 
he  definitely  broke  with  her,  and  their  intercourse  under 
the  Bourbons,  renewed  at  her  instigation,  was  due  to  his 
fidelity  rather  than  to  his  affection.  This  was  not,  it  must 
in  justice  be  added,  because,  as  was  formerly  alleged,  she 
had  ever  taken  unfair  advantage  of  his  early  sentiment. 
She  was  frankly  bored  by  the  heavy  strenuous  boy,  who 
would  not,  she  complained,  leave  her  pocket.  Long  after, 
Louis  Philippe  told  Victor  Hugo  that  he  had  only  once  been 
in  love,  and  that  was  with  Madame  de  Genii s.  '  I  was  a 
weak,  idle,  timid  boy,'  he  added ;  '  she  made  of  me  a  fairly 
courageous  man  with  a  heart.  As  I  grew  up  I  began  to  see 
that  she  was  very  pretty.  I  did  not  know  what  my  feelings 
in  her  presence  meant.  She  noticed  it  .  .  .  and  saw  her  way. 
.  .  .  She  treated  me  very  harshly.'  Louis  Philippe  was 
scarcely  passionate.  '  What  I  love  best  in  the  world  is  the 
new  Constitution  and  you,'  was  his  idea  of  a  love-letter. 
He  was  better  suited  to  Marie-Amelie  than  to  Felicite  de 
Genii  s. 

Apart  from  her  moral  influence,  what,  technically,  did 
her  educational  schemes  amount  to  ?  Louis  Philippe  re- 
corded that  he  had  received  '  a  ferocious  education.'  She 
left  her  pupils  no  peace  from  6  a.m.  till  10  at  night.  They 
slept  on  hard  beds,  they  learned  every  sort  of  manual  trade, 
they  endured  physical  hardships,  they  were  tormented  by 
history  and  geography,   their  very  walls  were  hung  with 


A  KEEPER  OF  ROYAL  SECRETS  297 

scenes  from  mythology,  and  they  never  had  holidays  of 
any  kind.  One  of  the  Encyclopaedists  called  her  Madame 
Livre,  another  a  '  Hen-Rousseau.'  M.  Harmand  truly  says 
that  she  is  a  mixture  of  Rousseau  and  Madame  de  Main- 
tenon.  But  she  was  much  more  than  a  pedant  or  a  theoriser. 
She  was  a  pioneer,  almost  a  genius.  She  foreshadowed  our 
system  of  hygiene,  she  enforced  air  and  exercise,  she  imposed 
gymnastics  upon  girls  as  well  as  boys.  Girls  had  also  to 
study  national  law  and  the  management  and  farming  of 
land.  In  other  ways  she  was  before  her  time.  She  decried 
the  classics  and  laid  great  stress  on  modern  languages  ;  she 
taught  history  by  dramatic  representation.  But,  while 
she  used  the  means,  she  characteristically  missed  the  end 
of  education — self-dependence.  Her  pupils  were  never 
left  alone  for  a  moment.  It  remained  for  Miss  Edge  worth, 
who  imitated  all  her  methods,  to  apply  them  to  the  right 
purpose.  And  her  plans  had  another  flaw,  this  time  a 
modern  flaw — they  were  wholly  utilitarian.  She  had  no 
notion  of  disinterested  knowledge  ;  there  was  always  an 
axe  to  grind,  even  where  the  arts  were  concerned.  It  was 
the  same  with  regard  to  religion.  She  instilled  piety,  she 
did  not  know  how  to  be  spiritual.  If,  as  M.  Harmand  says, 
she  created  a  model  bourgeois  King,  she  also  created  his 
religious  indifference.  The  power  to  risk  and  to  succeed 
was  her  heritage.  Her  adventurous  mother  and  her  im- 
pecunious father,  Pierre  Cesar  du  Crest,  were  well  provided 
with  both  talents.  When  the  girl  was  thirteen  (1759)  she 
and  the  mother  set  forth  on  a  sordid  little  Odyssey  of 
intrigue.  No  Minister,  no  Farmer-general,  was  too  old 
for  long  exploiting  visits  from  them.  Wherever  they  went 
they  took  her  harp,  which  showed  off  her  white  arms  to 
perfection.  She  had  trained  hard  to  be  a  Siren,  and  had 
practised  her  instrument  almost  too  much  to  attract  any 
sailor  of  distinction.  At  last  she  caught  the  Comte  de 
Genlis.     Some  mystery  hangs  over  their  casual  but  by  no 


298  NEW  AND  OLD 

means  unhappy  union ;  one  thing,  however,  is  clear — that 
her  husband's  grand  relations  would  not  receive  her,  The 
couple  retired  to  the  Comte's  terres  at  Genlis,  and  there 
Felicite  set  earnestly  to  work  to  achieve  notoriety  and  thus 
effect  an  entry  into  society.  She  ran  about  the  country- 
side with  a  barber,  bleeding  the  reluctant  peasants  ;  she 
rouged  the  nuns  in  a  convent ;  she  had  milk  baths.  It 
took  her  two  years  to  accomplish  her  end,  and  she  finally 
reached  it  through  private  theatricals.  Arriving  unex- 
pectedly in  Paris,  in  a  peasant's  cart,  she  began  business. 
She  made  herself  indispensable  to  a  few  houses  through 
her  acting,  her  harp,  her  serviceable  ways  ;  ignored  aristo- 
cratic snubs  with  a  smile  ;  picked  up  en  route  the  grand 
manner  that  she  lacked  ;  began  to  be  talked  about,  invited  ; 
achieved  her  master-stroke  by  contriving  to  charm  the  old 
Duke  of  Orleans  and  becoming  his  guest  at  Villers-Cotterets, 
a  house  rather  tabooed  by  virtuous  ladies  ;  negotiated  his 
marriage  with  her  step-aunt,  Madame  de  Montesson,  and  was 
appointed  as  lady-in-waiting  to  the  wife  of  his  son,  Philippe 
Egalite. 

Thus  she  found  herself  in  the  Palais  Royal,  and  her  real 
life  began.  Ere  this  her  husband's  family  had  relented  ; 
she  was  feted  and  adulated  everywhere.  Over  her  new 
mistress  she  soon  acquired  the  same  hypnotic  influence  that 
she  exercised  later  upon  the  Orleans  children.  The  poor 
Princess  adored  her,  would  listen  to  no  other  counsellor, 
and,  remaining  quite  unconscious  that  her  Genlis  had  already 
stolen  her  husband,  was  enraptured  when  she  became  her 
daughter's  governess.  Then  began  the  cruel  and  unequal 
duel  between  one  of  the  cleverest  and  one  of  the  stupidest 
of  ladies.  For  the  wife  of  Philippe  Egalite  (who  had  by 
this  time  succeeded  to  the  dukedom),  although  affectionate 
and  high-souled,  had  the  most  hidebound  of  Royal  minds. 
She  hated  her  husband's  politics,  and  treated  her  son's 
nobler  liberalism  as  a  shocking  form  of  madness ;   she  had, 


A  KEEPER  OF  ROY  AT.  SECRETS  299 

he  said,  all  the  prejudices  of  '  a  disgusting  aristocracy.'  It 
is  doubtful  whether  she  could  ever  have  understood  any 
intelligent  child — she  was  too  well-bred  and  inert.  When 
the  crisis  came  and  she  felt  she  could  no  longer  endure  the 
governess,  she  would  not  trust  her  timid  speech,  but  came 
to  Bellechasse  and  imperiously  read  aloud  her  accusations 
and  Madamc's  dismissal.  Madame  went,  but  was  at  once 
summoned  back  to  save  the  life  of  Mademoiselle,  who  had 
nearly  died  of  sorrow.  Egeria  Victrix  returned  to  reign 
triumphant.  Even  her  public  enemies,  such  as  La  Harpe, 
capitulated  in  private.  Her  salon  was  frequented  by  every 
star  of  the  day.  Rousseau  had  already  adored  her  and 
discharged  her  as  corrupt,  because  she  had  sent  him  a 
present  of  some  wine  ;  Cramer,  David,  most  artists  and 
musicians,  were  her  friends  ;  so  were  Brissot  and  Petion  ; 
so  at  all  times  was  Talleyrand.  The  pair  had  made  acquaint- 
ance in  the  early  days  of  her  marriage,  when  he  was  still 
an  unknown  abbe.  Throughout  their  lives,  with  every 
change  of  government,  they  met — generally  crossing  the 
road  to  the  sunny  side  together.  It  was  rumoured  that 
he  once  wished  for  closer  relations,  and  it  is  curious  to  think 
what  would  have  happened  had  these  two  skilled  foxes 
formed  a  co-operative  alliance.  But  it  did  not  suit  Felicite's 
game.  She  was  the  most  phylacteried  of  pretty  Pharisees. 
In  1779  she  published  her  Thecltre  a  V usage  des  jeunes  per- 
sonnes,  in  1782  her  manifesto  of  education,  Adele  et  Theodore. 
She  now  turned  her  attention  to  the  Revolution,  as  a  fresh 
asset  in  her  fortunes.  For  was  not  Philippe  Egalite  near 
the  Regency,  perhaps  the  throne  ?  She  became  an  enthu- 
siastic '  Red.'  The  night  after  the  taking  of  the  Bastille 
she  danced — and  she  made  Chartres  dance — with  the 
'  Maenads  '  in  the  Palais  Royal  garden.  Attired  in  a  tri- 
colour dress,  she  gave  a  ball  for  the  Orleans  children,  where 
they  danced  to  the  tune  of  '  ^a  ira.'  She  had  the  Due 
de  Chartres  made  a  member  of  the  Jacobin  Club  and  a 


300  NEW  AND  OLD 

contributor  to  Marat's  newspaper,  and  meanwhile  she  lent  her 
views  the  glamour  of  novelty  by  continuing  to  be  pious  and 
to  fight  the  Encyclopedic     But  no  strategy  could  stem  the 
coining  danger,  and   the   security  of   her   charges  necessi- 
tated absence  from  France.     In  1791  she  took  Mademoiselle 
and  the  lovely  Pamela  to  England,  where  for  a  year  they 
lived  and  saw  the  best  society.     They  lodged  at  Bath,  they 
lodged  at  Bury  ;    they  went  to  stay  with  Sheridan,  and  he 
became  engaged  to  Pamela.     Orleans,  however,  suddenly 
summoned  the  party  back  that  they  might  not  be  branded 
as  emigrees.  Madame  dallied;  they  arrived  too  late  for  safety, 
and  were  compelled  to  set  forth  again  at  once.     Madame  de 
Genlis  and  Philippe  Egalite  parted  for  the  last  time.     The 
fugitives  went  to  Tournai,  which  was  close  to  the  quarters 
of  General  Dumouriez  and  to  those  of  Chartres,  who  was 
serving   under   him.     They   were   accompanied   by   a   new 
friend,    Lord    Edward    Fitzgerald,    who    quickly    eclipsed 
Sheridan  and  married  Pamela  off-hand.     Madame,  mean- 
while, was  active,  conspiring  with  Dumouriez.     She  became 
involved  in  his  peril  and  was  forced  to  fly  for  her  life.     It 
seemed  to  her  that  the  delicate  Mademoiselle  would  increase 
her  own  dangers,  so  she  resolved  to  leave  her  '  daughter  ' 
behind — '  with    all    a    mother's    affection    and    blessings.' 
Stealing  away  from  the  sleeping  girl,  she  got  into  the  carriage ; 
but  Chartres  was  too  quick  for  her.     He  ran  upstairs,  caught 
his  sister  in  his  arms,  and  threw  her,  shivering,  into  the 
chaise.     The  inevitable  harp  was  sent  after  her — her  clothes 
were  not.     Dire  adventures  beset  them.     At  one  moment 
they  only  escaped  the  Austrians  because  the  General  mis- 
took the  governess  for  his  lady-love.     At  another,  Made- 
moiselle developed  scarlatina.     But  at  last  they  reached 
Switzerland  alive,  and  there  Chartres  joined  them.     There, 
too,  the  news  reached  Madame  de  Genlis,  first  of  her  hus- 
band's, then  of  Philippe  Egalite's  execution.     Chartres  had 
already  departed  to  pursue  his  own  way,  and,  some  six 


A  KEEPER  OF  ROYAL  SECRETS     301 

months   later,  Mademoiselle  went   to  live  with   her   aunt, 
Madame  de  Conti,  at  Fribourg. 

There  began  for  Madame  de  Genlis  a  life  of  fresh  intrigue, 
of  persecution,  debt,  incessant  wanderings  :  through  Switzer- 
land to  Altona  and  Hamburg,  where  she  came  across  Talley- 
rand ;  to  Berlin,  whence  she  was  chased  at  two  hours' 
notice;  it  was  said  that  she  was  conspiring,  manoeuvring, 
endeavouring  to  pervert  the  musical  Frederick  by  means  of 
her  redoubted  harp.  Back  she  travelled  to  the  north  of 
Germany  ;  then,  on  Frederick's  death,  back  to  Berlin — 
always  in  deepest  poverty,  making  a  bare  livelihood  by  her 
indefatigable  pen,  by  lectures,  by  giving  lessons.  She 
shared  her  last  penny  with  her  secretary  ;  she  taught  the 
harp  to  orphans,  and  adopted  them  ;  finally  she  engineered 
her  way  into  Berlin  society.  '  Society  '  there  meant  the 
Jewish  salons,  which  were  crowded  with  French  nobles. 
Madame  de  Genlis  made  herself  invaluable  to  Madame 
Cohen,  Madame  Hera,  Rachel  Levin  (later  Rachel  Varnhagen). 
When  Paris  was  once  more  open  to  her,  Madame  Cohen  came 
to  offer  her  all  her  diamonds  on  condition  she  should  stay  on 
in  Berlin.  But  Paris  was  irresistible.  She  returned  there, 
and,  fixing  her  hopes  upon  Napoleon,  she  imported  a  new 
set  of  principles.  She  believed  she  could  convert  him  to 
religion.  Impervious  to  the  harp,  he  was  susceptible  to 
manners.  He  took  her  for  the  representative  of  the  ancien 
regime  ;  he  allowed  her  to  write  him  a  weekly  letter  on 
morals  and  literature  ;  he  wept  over  her  novel  La  Duchesse 
de  la  Valliere ;  he  granted  her  apartments  in  the  Arsenal. 
But  she  changed  lodgings  as  often  as  she  changed  politics  ; 
the  only  tilings  that  did  not  alter  were  her  debts.  The 
Orleans  were  kind,  but  she  got  few  favours,  and  she  grumbled 
at  the  meagreness  of  the  pension  that  Louis  xviii.  eventually 
allowed  her.  Yet  it  saved  her  from  destitution  in  her  last 
years.  She  died  in  1830  at  the  age  of  eighty-four,  and 
Louis  Philippe  gave  her  a  handsome  funeral.     She  came  to 


302  NEW  AND  OLD 

regard  herself  as  an  Archbishop.  '  M.  de  Valence,'  she 
said,  '  has  taken  that  strong  liking  for  me  that  all  people 
have  had  when  seriously  ill.'  The  art  of  literature  was 
to  her  first  and  foremost  a  pulpit,  and  a  facile  pulpit.  She 
published  eighty-six  works,  and  she  made  '  copy  '  out  of 
life  from  the  day  when,  her  new-born  baby  by  her  side, 
she  wrote  her  Reflexions  oVune  mere  de  vingt  ans.  Emile 
Faguet,  in  his  charming  preface,  says  that  '  her  place  is  in 
the  front  row  of  women  of  letters  of  the  second  class.'  But 
the  teacher  was  stronger  than  the  author,  and  her  precepts 
were  stronger  than  her  practice.     (1913.) 


ALWAYS   A  BOURBON 

La  Duchesse  d'Orleans,  Mere  du  Roi  Louis  Philippe.  By 
Baron  Andre  de  Maricourt.  (Paris  :  Emile-Paul  Freres. 
5  francs.) 

When  we  lay  down  this  most  absorbing  book,  admirably 
written,  and  based  on  documents  private  and  printed,  we 
find  the  prevailing  sensation  to  be  one  of  wonder  that  so 
much  goodness  and  so  much  silliness  could  be  found  united 
in  a  single  person.  That  person  had  to  be  a  woman  ;  a 
man  could  not  contain  so  much  of  either  element  and  yet 
have  both.  And  that  woman  had  to  be  of  Royal  blood  to 
ensure  her  being  so  noble,  so  pious,  so  uncomplaining  in 
martyrdom,  of  such  incorrigibly  bad  judgment,  and  so 
desperately  unteachable. 

C'est  vrai,  et  je  le  re'pete  : 

On  n'est  pas  bon  quand  on  est  bete. 

Whoever  said  that — was  it  not  Diderot? — showed  a  thorough 
acquaintance  with  the  Ancien  Regime.  And  perhaps  it  is 
not  too  much  to  aver  that  a  truly  good  man  is  one  who 


ALWAYS  A  BOURBON  303 

reaps  use  from  experience — whatever,  moral  or  immoral, 
that  experience  may  be — while  a  bad  man  is  barren,  one 
who  has  the  experience  and  gets  nothing  from  it.  The 
Bourbons  could  all  of  them  dip  seven  times  in  reality  and 
come  out  as  unreal  as  before.  In  so  far  as  Marie-Adelaide 
de  Bourbon  Penthievre,  Duchesse  d'Orleans,  great-grand- 
daughter of  Louis  xiv.,  passed  through  the  red  waves  of 
the  Revolution  and  proved  herself  afterwards  more  indul- 
gent, more  saintly  in  facing  hardship  and  in  understanding 
human  distress — in  so  far  she  stands  out  as  a  good  woman. 
When  the  Revolution  broke  down  barriers  for  her,  she  was 
free.  But  she  could  not  clear  the  main  wall.  A  hundred 
Revolutions  would  not  have  shaken  her  belief  in  the  divine 
right  of  the  aristocracy  to  everything,  a  code  for  conduct 
that  ran  alongside  of  the  greatest  personal  unselfishness. 
Indeed,  her  very  goodness  was  in  part  of  the  noblesse  oblige 
kind,  a  payment  to  Heaven  for  the  privileges  it  conferred 
upon  the  Bourbons.  She  lost  most  of  those  she  loved  by 
the  guillotine  ;  two  of  her  children  died  of  the  results  of 
their  imprisonment ;  she  herself  knew  incarceration,  exile, 
destitution,  mortal  illness  ;  she  had  been  face  to  face  with 
violent  death.  But  nothing  could  give  her  a  grasp  of  facts. 
What  is  chiefly  known  about  her  is  her  miserable  marriage 
with  Philippe  Egalite,  her  passionate  love  for  him,  his 
infidelities,  his  final  capture  by  that  remorseless  feminine 
bandit,  Madame  de  Genlis,  and  her  second  capture  of  the 
Duchess's  children,  a  theft  which  left  the  poor  lady  in  much 
bitterer  bereavement  than  death  could  have  brought  her. 
That  Philippe  Egalite  was  a  wretch,  though  too  light  even 
to  be  weighed,  that  his  conduct  towards  the  Duchess  was 
abominable,  nobody  could  deny  ;  yet  she  alone  it  is  who 
produces  in  us  some  kind  of  sympathy  for  him.  For  all 
her  high  soul  and  her  generosity,  she  must  have  been  a 
provoking  wife.  More  than  one  witness  records  how  she 
never  ceased  to  cry  ;    her  eyes  were  chronically  red  from 


304  NEW  AND  OLD 

weeping ;  and  her  aggrieved  caressing  letters  to  her  children 
were  much  more  about  herself  than  about  them.  Madame 
de  Genlis  ruined  her  life.  Some  one  else  would  have  done 
that  as  far  as  her  husband  was  concerned,  but  none  except 
that  born  teacher,  that  '  agreeable  little  rascal,'  could  have 
robbed  her  of  her  sons  and  her  daughter.  There  were, 
however,  other  reasons  to  cause  the  separation.  The 
Duchess's  dispute  with  her  husband  was  ostensibly  a  reli- 
gious one  and  regarded  the  training  of  their  children. 
Madame  de  Genlis  and  Egalite  had  recourse  to  the  new 
priests  who  had  taken  the  oath  of  fealty  to  the  Nation. 
To  the  Duchess  this  was  as  great  a  sacrilege  as  a  confession 
of  atheism  ;  and  her  heart  was  almost  broken  when  her 
eldest  son,  the  Due  de  Chartres  (Louis  Philippe),  answered 
her  letter  of  exhortation  and  command  with,  '  Not  only 
have  I  no  scruple  in  going  to  one  of  the  new  parish  priests, 
but  I  regard  this  step  as  an  indispensable  duty,  for  I  firmly 
believe  that  the  decrees  have  not  made  any  sort  of  attack 
upon  the  dogmas  of  religion.'  Nothing  could  have  so  well 
measured  the  victory  of  Madame  de  Genlis,  the  gulf  between 
the  Duchess  and  her  family,  or  her  utter  solitude,  as  this 
passage.  Strange  mixture  as  she  was  of  the  monumental- 
marble  weeping  aristocrat,  the  drooping  lady  of  urns  and 
broken  columns,  and  of  the  feudal  heroine  who  could  well 
have  held  her  husband's  castle  against  an  army  ;  of  the 
Lady  Byron  who  longed  to  reform  a  husband,  and  the 
passionate  woman  crying  out  for  his  love  at  any  price ; 
she  could  on  occasion  act  with  surprising  force  and  matter- 
of-factness.  To  the  shocked  surprise  of  everybody,  most 
of  all  to  that  of  Egalite  (for  aristocrats  did  not  usually  act 
thus),  she  instituted  legal  proceedings  against  him  in  order 
to  secure  her  large  fortune  for  her  children,  and  firmly 
pursued  her  course. 

She  had  gone  home  to  live  with  her  father  in  Normandy 
at  Eu,  and  at  other  of  his  numerous  country  places.     It  was 


ALWAYS  A    HoniUiON  805 

here  that  the  Revolution  found  them.  Nothing  in  this 
record  is  more  acute  or  more  significant  of  the  prevailing 
terror  than  the  way  they  received  the  news  of  the  death  of 
the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,  the  Prince's  chere  belle-fille.  The 
tidings  reached  the  house  at  midnight  by  a  special  courier 
from  Paris.  M.  dc  Miromesnil,  the  Prince's  guest  and 
faithful  friend,  undertook  to  break  the  news  to  the  Duchess, 
still  in  bed.  In  the  early  morning  he  walked  into  her  room, 
solemn  horror  stamped  upon  his  countenance,  the  letters 
the  post  had  brought  her  in  his  hand.  Directly  she  saw 
him,  anguish  seized  her ;  she  asked  breathless  questions  ; 
'  the  No's  and  Yes's,  Madame,  follow  one  another  till  the 
cruel  word,  the  glacial  word,  the  word  "  dead  "  is  uttered.' 
In  silence  the  two,  with  their  pale  attendants,  enter  the 
bedroom  of  the  sleeping  Prince,  already  in  the  clutch  of 
fatal  illness.  He  wakes  to  find  the  group  there  with  faces 
turned  to  stone,  the  Duchess  covering  hers  with  her  hands. 
There  was  a  pause  ;  then  '  the  old  Prince  .  .  .  averted 
his  eyes.  .  .  .  He  had  understood.'  Happily  for  him,  he 
died  naturally,  before  the  guillotine  could  take  him,  and 
so  much  beloved  of  his  vassals  that  his  coffin,  attended  by 
proscribed  priests,  was  allowed  to  proceed  unmolested. 

His  death  began  a  series  of  tragic  adventures  for  his 
unprotected  daughter,  ending  by  her  transference,  in  a 
moribund  condition,  to  Paris  and  the  Prison  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg. She  was  one  of  those  women  who  are  always  dying 
and  never  dead.  Unable  to  walk,  excepting  with  two 
people  to  help  her,  ashen- coloured  and  grey-lipped,  suffering 
torments,  she  yet  survived  till  1821.  In  the  prison  she 
found  her  old  society ;  its  members  met  daily,  and  daily 
they  decreased  ;  they  talked  and  talked  '  with  some  light- 
ness and  much  heroism  ' ;  and  every  hour  the  Duchess 
listened  for  the  echoing  footsteps  to  stop  at  her  door  and 
presage  the  end.  But  though  she  did  every  tactless  thing, 
writing  explanatory  reams  of  protest  to  the  Republic  instead 

u 


306  NEW  AND  OLD 

of  alloAving  herself  to  be  forgotten,  nothing  happened  ;  and 
on  the  plea  of  her  health  she  was  eventually  removed  to 
the  less  rigid  confinement  of  a  maison  de  sante,  one  of  those 
lunatic  asylums  used  by  the  Terror  for  such  prisoners  as 
had  influence  enough  to  loose  the  bolts,  and  organised — at 
least  in  this  case — by  exploiting  scoundrels  who  charged 
their  captives  exorbitant  prices  for  bare  garrets  and  for 
food  worse  than  that  of  the  prisons.  It  is  interesting  to 
realise  that,  these  abuses  once  discovered,  the  Republic 
investigated  the  matter  like  the  most  orderly  Government 
in  the  world,  and  shipped  off  the  guilty  proprietor  to  the 
galleys. 

In  spite  of  all,  the  Duchess  slowly  recovered,  as  much  as 
she  ever  recovered,  thanks  partly  to  the  open  air,  but  much 
more  to  another  cause  ;  for  here  it  was,  in  this  misused 
lunatic  asylum,  that,  in  1794-95,  she  met  her  fate — the 
man  who  ruled  the  rest  of  her  life.  And  to  add  to  the 
strangeness,  this  Rouzet  was  the  son  of  a  tailor  and  a  member 
of  the  Convention,  a  partisan  of  those  who  had  murdered 
her  family  and  desecrated  all  she  held  most  sacred.  It  is 
true  that  he  had  the  courage  to  oppose  the  execution  of 
Louis  xvi.  and  to  try  to  save  the  lives  of  the  condemned  ; 
that  in  after  days,  under  the  aegis  of  the  Duchess,  he  became 
a  fervent  Royalist.  But  none  the  less  surprising  was  this 
relationship — as  it  would  seem,  erratically  platonic — which 
lasted,  without  a  break,  for  twenty-six  years  or  more. 
Almost  from  the  first,  he  gained  a  complete  and,  on  the 
whole,  a  beneficial  ascendancy  over  her.  Twice  he  saved 
her  life  ;  he  did  much  to  help  in  the  deliverance  of  her  two 
younger  sons,  so  cruelly  imprisoned  at  Marseilles  ;  he  worked 
away  to  rescue  her  fortune  and  to  get  her  compensation. 
He  gave  her  money  ;  he  was  her  servant  and  her  sovereign. 
Only  a  high-flown  Princess  and  a  Gascon  could  have  brought 
this  friendship  off.  When  the  Duchess  was  granted  her 
freedom,  in  spite  of  all  her  projects,  she  stayed  on  in  the 


ALWAYS  A  BOURBON  307 

asylum  with  Rouzet ;  and  when  she  was  sent,  an  exile,  into 
Spain  with  the  old  Prince  de  Conti,  and  the  berline  was 
searched  at  the  frontier,  there,  beneath  a  pile  of  rugs,  the 
discomfited  devotee  was  found  hidden. 

It  was  an  awkward  position  for  a  member  of  Parliament ; 
and  the  Government  sat  solemnly  upon  the  question,  but 
decided  in  favour  of  love.  So  Rouzet  was  allowed  to 
accompany  his  lady  into  Spain,  where  her  cousin,  the 
Bourbon  King  Charles  vn.,  soon  turned  him  into  Joseph 
Rozet,  Chevalier  de  l'Ordre  de  Malte  and  Comte  de  Folrnon. 
In  spite  of  the  long  letters  she  sent  his  Majesty  about  her 
destitution,  this  was  all  he  did  for  his  poverty-stricken 
relation,  except  to  give  her  a  worn-out  leather  chair  for 
her  vermin-infested  castle.  Here  she  kept  a  crazy  Court 
on  nothing  a  year,  with  Rouzet  as  her  Chancellor  and 
housekeeper  ;  and  a  shocking  one  he  was,  starving  his  lady 
and  her  guests,  jealous,  devoted,  honest,  feckless.  Some- 
times his  wife,  who  had  appeared  suddenly  in  France  from 
the  provinces,  arrived  to  make  a  contented  third  on  this 
uncomfortable  hearth,  and  disappeared  again  as  calmly  as 
she  came.  The  two  friends  were  absorbed  in  one  another, 
and  Rouzet  gradually  sapped  all  the  rest  of  the  Duchess, 
till  she  ceased  even  to  try  to  see  her  children  and  let  the 
two  young  Princes,  Montpensier  and  her  once  much-loved 
Beaujolais,  die  far  away  from  her.  When  her  daughter  at 
last  joined  her  after  years  of  separation,  Mademoiselle 
found  the  position  insupportable  and  finally  left  her.  Nor 
did  Chartres,  the  best  of  sons,  fare  much  better.  At  Naples, 
whither  his  mother  went  to  promote  his  marriage  with  the 
Princess  Marie-Amelie,  she  quarrelled  violently  with  the 
affable  couple  because  she  said  that  they  had  slighted  her 
Count.  That  gentleman  allowed  her  no  margin  for  any 
one  but  himself,  unless  it  were  for  the  convenient  poor,  who 
did  not  hurt  his  vanity  and  to  whom  she  never  ceased  to 
give  every  penny  that  she  did  not  give  to  him. 


308  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  writer  of  this  volume  ascribes  her  grande  passion  to 
middle-aged  sentiment  and  to  a  hungry  heart.     But  that 
hardly  accounts  for  her  choice,  or  for  her  fidelity.     To  those 
victims  of  the  Revolution  who  had  lost  all — their  loved 
ones,  their  every  landmark — it  must  have  seemed  that  the 
only  possible  condition  of  living  on  was  to  make  a  com- 
pletely new  life,  divorced  from  what  went  before,  a  life 
that  would  drug  memory  and  blot  out  old  associations. 
And   this  was   what   the  Duchess,  doubly  embittered  by 
hopeless  separation  from  her  children,  succeeded  in  doing. 
By  the  time  she  could  once  more  see  them,  it  was  too  late. 
The  result  was  inevitable.     When  the  Restoration  brought 
her  back   to   Paris,   prompted   probably   by   Rouzet,   she 
engaged  in  fierce  money  disputes   with  her  family,   and 
Louis   xviii.   had   to   interpose.     But  by   whom   was   the 
reconciliation    between    mother    and    children    effected  ? 
By  Madame  de  Genlis.     And  by  the  intervention  of  what 
ambassador  ?     None   other   than   the   Comte   de   Folmon. 
Strange  cotillon,  strange  chasse-croise  of  partners.     Madame 
was  charmed  with  the  Count ;   she  had  a  private  interview 
with   the   Duchess ;     she   lavished   eulogies   and   affection. 
Once  more  she  won  the  game  and  joined  what  she  had  put 
asunder. 

The  remainder  of  Marie-Adelaide's  life  was  spent  between 
Paris  and  Ivry  in  trying  to  revive  a  past  that  was  gone 
for  ever.  '  We  give  one  another  little  presents,  little  foolish 
things  that  charm  us,'  wrote  a  friend  of  the  Ancien  Regime 
who  still  made  one  of  her  small  circle  ;  '  I  find  again  in  her 
that  old  manner  of  arranging  and  of  loving  comfortable 
things  which  causes  me  such  pleasure.'  Such  things  also 
pleased  the  ruling  deity.  If  any  guest  took  the  seat  at 
table  that  was  sheltered  from  the  draught,  he  was  summarily 
removed.  It  was  the  chair  of  Monsieur  le  Comte  de  Folmon. 
There  was  in  these  last  years  but  one  poignant  recall  to 
bygone  misery.     It  was  when  the  widow  of  Egalite  had  an 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  309 

audience  with  Louis  xvi.'s  daughter,  the  deep  and  narrow, 
the  unforgiving  Duchesse  d'Angouleme.  Trembling,  the 
Duchess  prostrated  herself.  '  Grace,  Madame,  grace  !  '  she 
cried.  Madame  let  her  drag  herself  two  or  three  times  along 
the  ground.  '  Relevez-vous,  Madame,''  was  all  she  said ; 
and,  after  a  few  stiff  words,  the  interview  ended. 

The  Duchess  died  in  1821,  of  an  agonising  illness  borne 
with  unmurmuring  fortitude.  The  Republican  Due  de 
Chartres  found  himself  at  sea  as  to  the  etiquette  proper  for 
the  funeral.  There  was  one  person  he  knew  who  could 
inform  him.  Again  it  was  Madame  de  Genlis.  In  death, 
as  in  life,  she  dominated  her  victim,  and  she  said  that  the 
funeral  was  as  well  arranged  as  possible  for  the  honour  of 
the  Duchesse  d'Orleans.     (1914.) 


ROBERT   SOUTHEY 

Letters  of  Robert  Southev.  A  Selection  edited  by  Maurice 
H.  FitzcxERald.  The  World's  Classics.  (London:  Frowde. 
Oxford  :  The  University  Press.)     Is.  net. 

Of  Robert  Southey  it  might  without  exaggeration  be  said, 
'  of  such  is  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  ' — not  the  highest 
zone  in  the  kingdom,  but  the  part  reserved  for  the  useful 
angels,  the  angels  without  wings,  for  its  generous  banks  and 
benevolent  societies.  He  was  a  born  administrator ;  had 
he  taken  office  in  the  New  Jerusalem  it  would  have  been  on 
its  Local  Government  Board.  And — a  good  test- — he  was 
an  angel  to  fallen  angels  ;  one  who  would  always  cross  the 
road  to  bind  up  their  wounds,  although  he  lectured  while 
he  doctored  ;  one  who  was  wont  to  leave  more  than  twopence 
for  their  entertainment.  Short  of  what  he  needed  for  his 
family,  the  whole  of  his  purse  was  at  the  disposal  of  his 
friends,  especially  of  those  who  trod  the  narrow  way.     Any 


310  NEW  AND  OLD 

reader  of  his  correspondence  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
keep  count  of  the  contributions  he  gives  to  needy  acquaint- 
ance, and  to  compare  them  with  his  hardly  earned  income, 
will  come  away  humbled  and  surprised.  Such  a  letter  as 
that  in  which  he  starts  a  scheme  to  collect  enough  to  buy 
an  annuity  for  poor,  depressed  John  Taylor  of  Norwich, 
who  had  fallen  upon  evil  days,  acts  like  a  cordial  on  the 
heart ;  and  so  does  his  eloquent  appeal  to  the  friends  of 
Coleridge — who  was,  as  usual,  missing — to  send  his  son 
Hartley  to  Oxford.  He  gave  what  is  better  worth  than 
money — he  gave  himself,  without  stint,  without  weariness  ; 
and  in  the  midst  of  a  strenuous,  over-worked  existence 
spared  no  pains  to  be  of  service  to  whoever  made  a  call 
upon  him,  whether  it  were  to  solicit  a  post,  to  read  manu- 
scripts, or  to  give  advice.  No  obscure  poet  wrote  to  him 
without  getting  a  full  answer,  no  despondent  man  came 
away  without  practical  comfort,  comfort  bestowed  by  one 
who  had  gone  into  the  case  like  a  doctor  and  had  a  doctor's 
faith  in  his  prescriptions.  '  In  my  moments  of  reverie,'  he 
wrote  in  1800,  '  I  have  sometimes  imagined  myself  such  a 
character  [a  confessor] — the  obscure  instrument  in  pro- 
moting virtue  and  happiness.'  And,  like  a  confessor  or  a 
doctor,  it  was  his  business — and  his  weakness — not  to  be 
mystified  by  any  form  of  human  suffering.  He  had  a 
ready  medicine  for  every  ill :  for  tormented  poets  clear 
lessons  in  construction  ;  for  religious  doubters  clear  spy- 
glasses to  show  the  moral  reefs  ahead  ;  for  those  in  sorrow 
Epictetus. 

I  have  heard  of  men  [he  says]  who,  when  their  wives  have 
died,  have  suffered  everything  belonging  to  the  dead  to  remain 
precisely  as  they  left  it  for  years  and  years — the  music-book 
open,  the  shawl  thrown  across  the  chair,  the  fan  or  parasol  on 
the  table — and  this  till  they  died  themselves.  This  is  insanity  ; 
but  one  can  understand  its  nature  and  growth.  If  ever  I 
become  insane  it  will  not  be  in  this  way.     There  is  the  same 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  311 

excuse  for  drunkenness  and  debauchery  as  for  over-sensibility. 
Twelve  years  ago  I  carried  Epictetus  in  my  pocket,  till  my  verj 
heart  was  ingrained  with  it,  as  a  pig's  bones  become  red  by 
feeding  him  upon  madder. 

And  Southey  practised  his  precepts  ;  nowhere  is  he  braver 
or  more  lovable  than  in  the  letters  he  writes  in  grief.  In  his 
youth  the  loss  of  his  great  friend  at  Oxford,  Edmund  Seward, 
gave  his  soul  a  shock  which  early  inured  him  to  death  ;  and 
his  strength  did  not  fail  him  when  there  fell  the  blow  which 
changed  the  world  for  him — the  death,  at  ten  years,  of  his 
idolised  boy,  Herbert,  the  centre  of  his  hopes  and  happi- 
ness.    It  broke  his  heart,  but  not  his  faith. 

Wherefore  do  I  write  to  you  [he  asks  a  friend]  ?  Alas ! 
because  I  know  not  what  to  do.  To-morrow,  perhaps,  may 
bring  with  it  something  like  the  beginning  of  relief.  To-day  I 
hope  I  shall  support  myself,  or  rather  that  God  will  support  me, 
for  I  am  weak  as  a  child,  in  body  even  more  than  in  mind. 
...  I  am  wanting  in  no  effort  to  appear  calm  and  to  console 
others.  .  .  .  Many  blessings  are  left  me— abundant  blessings, 
more  than  I  have  deserved.  ...  I  have  strong  ties  to  life  and 
many  duties  yet  to  perform.  .  .  .  Reason  will  do  something. 
Time  more,  Religion  most  of  all.  The  loss  is  but  for  this  world  ; 
but  as  long  as  I  remain  in  this  world  I  shall  feel  it. 

Skiddaw  and  Helvellyn  were  stern  masters  to  him,  as 
they  were  to  his  neighbour  Wordsworth.  Not  that  the 
poets  got  on  too  well ;  perhaps  both  had  too  much  self- 
control  and  self-esteem  to  suit  one  another ;  each  needed  a 
weaker  man  to  influence  and  to  guide.  '  It  seemed  to  me,' 
says  De  Quincey,  '  as  if  both  had  silently  said,  "  WTe  are 
neighbours,  or  what  passes  for  such  in  the  country.  Let  us 
show  each  other  the  courtesies  which  are  becoming  to  men 
of  letters  ;  and,  for  any  closer  connexion,  our  distance  of 
thirteen  miles  may  be  always  sufficient  to  keep  us  from  that." 
Indeed,  Southey  had  no  time  for  visits.  His  work  was  his 
armour,  his  staff,  the  only  power,  excepting  his  faith,  which 


312  NEW  AND  OLD 

helped  him  through  the  darkness  of  loss  and  reconciled  him 
to  life.     Pen-driving  was  such  a  habit  with  him  that  he 
could  return  to  it  at  once,  almost  before  death  was  out  of 
the  house.     Perhaps  no  man  of  letters  ever  worked  so  hard. 
The  books  by  which  his  name  is  known  are  as  nothing  to 
the  complete  list.     From  the  day  in  1796  when  Joseph 
Cottle,  that  kind  godfather  of  so  many  heavy  infants  of 
the  Muse,  printed  Joan  of  Arc,  he  never  ceased  to  pro- 
duce.    Besides  his  endless  prefacings  and  editings,  antho- 
logies, annual  registers,  and  copious  articles,  he  published 
some  thirty- three  original  works,  three-quarters  of  which 
he  believed  to  be  immortal.     Several  of  them  were  long  his- 
tories needing  years  of  arduous  labour,  many  others  conscien- 
tious   biographies.      Haunted    by  the   need    of    providing 
for  his  family  after  his  lifetime,  he  even  made  an  inventory 
of  the  friends  his  letters  to  whom  he  wished  to  be  published 
at   his   death,   and   asked  one  of  them   to   mark   at   once 
such  passages  as  he  thought  suitable  for  print.     He  always 
kept  five  or  six  of  his  tasks  upon  the  stocks,  some  poetic, 
some  in  prose,  and  wrote  at  each  in  turn,  the  sole  condi- 
tion on  which  he  could  keep  his  mind  going  without  a 
breakdown.     The    result    was    inevitable.     Quantity    and 
quality    were    too    often    confounded.      And    in    the    end 
Southey's  worst  fears  were  realised.     When  the  last  blow 
fell  upon  his  spirit,  worn  by  grief  and  toil,  and  his  wife  went 
mad,  he  worked  on  for  five  years  and  then,  at  sixty-five, 
his   over-burdened   brain   gave   way.     But   till    that   time, 
even  after  his  boy's  death,  his  life  kept  a  pleasant  tenor. 
'  I  have  taken  again  to  my  old  coat  and  old  shoes,'  he  writes 
in  1824,  '  dine  at  the  reasonable  hour  of  four,  enjoy  as  I 
used  to  do  the  wholesome  indulgence  of  a  nap  after  dinner, 
drink  tea  at  six,  sup  at  half-past  nine,  spend  an  hour  over 
a  sober  folio  and  a  glass  of  black-currant  rum  with  warm 
water  and  sugar,  and  then  to  bed.'     His  great  excitement 
was  the  arrival  of  books  by  coach  or  wagon — wagon  was 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  818 

cheapest.  Those  were  the  days  of  the  romance  of  parcels, 
when  a  horn  announced  them  and  they  might  cost  a  guinea 
to  receive  (as  did  Southey's  parcel  from  Miss  Barker)  if 
they  were  sent  by  the  wrong  conveyance.  Scott's  and 
Landor's  poems  travelled  to  him  in  this  fashion  ;  London 
friends  took  such  opportunity  as  offered  to  send  him  collec- 
tive packets  and  add  to  the  provision  of  his  library,  that 
library  which  was  to  him  an  empire.  And  then,  not  infre- 
quently, came  guests;  old  friends  who  arrived  to  stay  and 
shared  his  long  daily  walks  over  hill  and  dale,  like  Coleridge, 
who  took  up  his  abode  with  him  ('Colridge's  Room'  still 
stands  large  upon  the  door  of  the  best  apartment  in  the 
house)  and  ended  by  depositing  his  family  permanently 
beneath  Southey's  wing ;  or  casual  visitors,  like  Shelley, 
at  nineteen,  living  near  by,  in  lodgings  with  Harriet — Shelley 
who  appeared  at  tea-time  and,  in  the  abstraction  of  dis- 
cussion, ate,  one  by  one,  the  dish  of  buttered  crumpets  on 
which  Southey  had  counted  ;  many  others,  too,  less  known 
to  fame.  And  here  we  come  to  what  was,  next  to  literature, 
the  serious  business  of  Southey's  life — to  friendship.  It  is 
seldom  that  an  author  occupied  in  creating  has  been  so 
steady  and  unselfish  a  friend  to  many — and  a  friend,  it 
must  be  added,  so  unexciting.  '  The  tone  of  Southey's 
animal  spirits,'  writes  De  Quincey,  '  was  never  at  any  time 
raised  beyond  the  standard  of  an  ordinary  sympathy ;  there 
was  in  him  no  tumult,  no  agitation  of  passion.  .  .  .  Cheer- 
ful he  was,  and  animated  at  all  times,  but  he  levied  no 
tribute  on  the  spirits  or  the  feelings  beyond  what  all  people 
could  furnish.'  This  was  both  his  strength  and  his  limita- 
tion, and  in  either  respect  he  misread  his  powers. 

For  Southey  never  knew  what  he  was  like.  The  strange 
thing  about  him  is  that  a  useful  angel  was  the  last  thing 
he  wished  to  be.  He  believed  in  himself  as  a  genius  and 
as  the  friend  of  genius.  Never  did  such  a  reasonable  man 
build  such  a  reasonable  structure  upon  such  an  unsound 


314  NEW  AND  OLD 

basis.  '  There  is  an  evil,'  he  writes,  '  in  seeing  all  things 
like  a  poet ;  circumstances  which  would  glide  over  a  healthier 
mind  sink  into  mine  ;  everything  comes  to  me  with  its  whole 
force — the  full  meaning  of  a  look,  a  gesture,  a  child's  im- 
perfect speech,  I  can  perceive,  and  cannot  help  perceiving.' 
This  was  his  view  of  himself.  But  he  never  knew  that 
genius  was  inaccessible  ;  and  he  thought  that  it  could  be 
acquired  by  perseverance  and  right  habits.  He  prided 
himself  upon  writing  Thalaba  and  the  Curse  of  Kehama 
before  breakfast ;  he  begged  Bernard  Barton  never  to 
write  at  night,  lest  he  should  make  his  Quaker  connections 
think  the  poet's  profession  not  respectable ;  his  chief  aim, 
he  said,  was  to  trace  the  progress  of  morality  in  history  ;  he 
used,  as  we  know,  to  write  half  a  dozen  works  of  genius  at 
once — and  yet  he  believed  himself  to  be  like  the  youthful 
Shelley. 

Here  [he  wrote]  is  a  man  at  Keswick,  who  acts  upon  me  as 
my  own  ghost  would  do.  He  is  just  what  I  was  in  1794.  His 
name  is  Shelley.  .  .  .  He  is  come  to  the  fittest  physician  in  the 
world.  ...  It  has  surprised  him  a  good  deal  to  meet,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  with  a  man  who  perfectly  understands 
him.  ...  I  tell  him  that  all  the  difference  between  us  is  that 
he  is  nineteen  and  I  am  thirty-seven  ;  and  I  daresay  it  will  not 
be  very  long  before  I  shall  succeed  in  convincing  him  that  he 
may  be  a  true  philosopher,  and  do  a  great  deal  of  good,  with 
£6000  a  year. 

This  was  a  droll  sort  of  '  perfect '  understanding.  Eight 
years  afterwards  Southey  was  writing  to  tell  his  '  ghost ' 
that  he  was  a  propagandist  of  monstrous  depravity.  He 
had  not  the  eye  to  see  that  Shelley's  failures  came  from 
aiming  too  high,  not  too  low — from  too  many  principles 
instead  of  too  few.  While  Southey  took  fact  for  truth, 
Shelley  took  truth  for  fact  and  acted  on  the  assumption. 
Southey's  error  was  the  deeper  of  the  two,  but,  unaware  of 
it,  he  lost  his  chance  of  modifying  the  impressionable  poet. 


ROBERT  SOUTH  KY  :515 

Byron  he  regarded  as  Satan  ;  and  Murray,  he  says,  is 
'  implicated  with  him  in  the  disgrace  which  must  attach  to 
every  person  concerned  in  bringing  forth  Don  Juan.'  Upon 
Elia  he  pronounces  that  '  there  are  some  things  in  it 
which  will  offend,'  and,  truly  though  he  loved  Lamb,  he 
wrote  of  him  almost  as  of  a  reprobate  ;  of  Coleridge  he 
came  to  talk  as  of  the  person  whose  bad  example  had  first 
taught  him  the  use  of  self-restraint  in  conversation.  A 
man  may  be  bewildered  by  genius,  or  he  may  reverence  it, 
but  he  may  not  sit  and  disapprove  or  be  cocksure  about 
it.  A  genius  puts  the  whole  of  his  being  and  all  his  powers 
of  restraint  into  his  art,  he  has  little  left  over  for  daily  life  ; 
while  a  man  of  talent  invests  but  a  part  of  himself  in  his 
work,  he  makes  spiritual  economies  enough  to  live  on. 

But  Southcy  did  not  think  himself  a  man  of  talent.  His 
disapproval  was  all  part  of  his  fundamental  mistake.  As 
he  believed  himself  to  be  a  genius,  and  knew  that  he  could 
behave  and  control  himself,  he  felt  convinced  that  all  geniuses 
were  capable  of  self-government  if  they  would  but  try  to 
be  regular.  The  error  induced  the  strange  sort  of  Pharisaism 
which  has  alienated  so  many  from  him.  He  admired  him- 
self, but  then  he  was  admirable.  And  we  love  him  through 
it  all  because  he  was  so  simple  and  sincere.  There  is 
morning  dew  upon  his  self-esteem  ;  and,  if  he  was  the  hero- 
worshipper  of  himself,  he  certainly  lived  up  to  his  ideal. 
That  is  why  the  greater  men  he  reproved — greater  than 
himself — continued  to  love  and  trust  him  ;  why  Lamb  and 
Shelley  wrote  him  answers  of  such  large  and  gentle  charity 
that  only  goodness  could  have  called  them  forth  ;  why 
even  Byron  behaved  nicely  to  him  when  he  met  him. 

The  same  almost  childlike  delusion  permeated  his  view 
of  his  writings.  Southey  was  essentially  the  man  of  letters. 
His  Muse  was  his  wife,  not  his  mistress  :  his  wife  who  during 
his  short  absences  awaited  his  return  upon  the  doorstep, 
and  was  ready  to  make  tea  for  him — too  much  tea.     But 


316  NEW  AND  OLD 

Southey  thought  otherwise.  He  knows  of  no  poem 
equal  in  originality  to  Thalaba  except  the  Faerie  Queen. 
'  With  Tasso,  with  Virgil,  with  Homer,'  he  says,  '  there 
may  be  fair  grounds  of  comparison,  but  my  mind  is  wholly 
unlike  Milton's.'  His  article  on  education  was  to  '  set  the 
question  at  rest  for  ever '  ;  and  '  there  can  be  no  doubt,' 
he  writes,  '  I  shall  be  sufficiently  talked  of  when  I  am  gone.' 
As  for  his  History  of  Brazil,  '  ages  hence  it  will  be  found 
among  those  works  which  are  not  destined  to  perish  .  .  . 
it  will  be  read  in  the  heart  of  South  America  .  .  .  and  be 
to  the  Brazilians  what  the  work  of  Herodotus  is  to  Europe.' 
The  History  of  Brazil  seems  to  have  been  the  favourite 
nursling  of  his  brain.  '  English  books,'  he  writes  from 
Holland,  '  are  so  scarce  here  that  they  have  never  seen  any 
work  of  mine  except  Roderick.  Of  course  I  have  ordered 
over  a  complete  set  of  my  poems  and  the  History  of 
Brazil.'  Rather  a  heavy  p.p.c.  card  for  his  Dutch  hosts, 
the  Bilderdijks. 

All  this  is,  perhaps,  a  unique  instance  of  megalomania  in 
a  sane  man,  but  it  is  so  naive  as  to  be  disarming.  Hannah 
More,  the  rival  moralist  and  benefactor — in  many  ways  his 
feminine  counterpart — thought  much  the  same  as  he  did, 
but  was  far  too  wary  to  say  so.  Southey  was  humble  before 
God,  humbler  than  Hannah  ;  and  to  understand  them  both 
we  must  remember  their  amazing  contemporary  reputation. 
There  is  a  vanity  so  childish  that  it  is  not  incompatible  with 
heaven,  and  Southey's  vanity  was  coupled  with  a  nobility 
which  made  him  behave  as  well  when  he  suffered  worldly 
disappointment  as  he  did  when  on  the  crest  of  the  wave. 
He  had,  too,  the  purging  grace  of  the  power  to  admire  others 
as  heartily  as  he  admired  himself.  His  fervent  feeling  for 
Landor  is  a  beautiful  thing,  and  so  is  his  affection  for  Walter 
Scott.  And  there  can  be  but  little  harm  in  a  quality  which 
he  himself  so  frankly  exposes  in  his  letters  to  his  friends. 
No  one  who  has  not  read  those  letters  can  know  what  good 


ROBERT  SOUTHEY  517 

company  Southey  must  have  been.  They  are  racy,  stringent, 
and  sincere,  full  of  limited  insight  and  of  prejudice — a 
seasoning  flavour  in  correspondence.  His  wit  ran  narrow, 
but  it  ran  deep,  especially  in  the  early  years  of  his  man- 
hood, when  the  letters  are  best  and  full  of  sound  and  pungent 
criticisms.  As  he  grew  older  his  natural  perspicacity  was 
rather  dimmed  by  his  high  Toryism,  and  his  pen  grows 
heavier.  But  he  seldom  fails  in  vivid,  one-sided  portraiture — 
whether  of  Hartley  Coleridge,'  the  oddest  of  all  God's  creatures 
.  .  .  totally  destitute  of  anything  like  modesty,  yet  without 
the  slightest  tinge  of  impudence  in  his  nature  ' ;  or  of  '  little 
Mr.  Quincey  '  ('  I  wish,'  he  says,  '  he  were  not  so  little,  and 
I  wish  he  would  not  leave  his  great-coat  always  behind  upon 
the  road  ') ;  or  of  Jeffrey,  the  editor  of  the  Edinburgh — the 
'  homunculus  of  five  foot  one,  with  a  face  which  upon  a 
larger  scale  would  be  handsome  .  .  .  ^enunciating  his 
words  as  if  he  had  studied  elocution  under  John  Thelwall, 
of  whom  indeed  he  is  an  Elzevir  edition  in  better 
binding.' 

But  the  best  portrait  that  he  gives  us  in  his  letters  is, 
after  all,  the  portrait  of  himself.  We  see  him  innocently 
revealed  here  as  he  was  :  a  soul  without  guile,  unspotted 
by  the  world  ;  a  man  of  talent,  the  perfect  friend  of  men  of 
talent ;  a  poet,  whose  best  poem,  an  unwritten  one,  was 
his  love  for  his  boy — a  love  which,  he  tells  us,  '  passed  the 
love  of  women,'  and  was  '  more  lightly  alarmed  than  the 
wakefullest  jealousy.'  It  is  by  what  men  are  unconscious 
of  in  themselves,  by  their  being,  not  their  doing,  that  they 
achieve  the  most.  And  it  is  not  by  his  deeds,  or  his  works, 
not  even  by  his  Life  of  Nelson  or  his  Life  of  Wesley,  that 
Robert  Southey  will  live,  as  he  believed  he  would.  His 
enduring  monument  is  his  goodness.     (1912.) 


318  NEW  AND  OLD 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT   BROWNING 

A  century — and  perhaps  no  less — gives  the  needful  per- 
spective to  a  poet,  and  enables  us  to  assign  him  his  place 
on  the  roll  of  the  immortals.  Still  more  is  this  true  of  a 
poetess,  perhaps  because  there  are  few  of  her  kind,  perhaps 
also  because  women's  personal  histories  are  more  inextric- 
ably bound  up  with  their  work  than  is  the  case  with  men. 
And  now  that  a  hundred  years  have  passed  since  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning's  birth,  it  is  easier  than  before  to  appraise 
her  for  what  she  was.  There  are  few  of  those  born  in  the 
fifties  and  the  sixties  who  did  not  feel  the  glamour  of  her 
song  while  their  day  was  still  at  the  spring.  To  them  she 
represented  youth  in  its  strength  and  in  its  weakness  ; 
youth  with  its  confident  flights  towards  the  sun,  its  humbled 
and  heavy  falls  to  earth,  with  its  optimism  and  its  morbid- 
ness, its  scorn  of  seemings,  its  power  to  live  by  illusion. 
And  when  we  re-read  her  poetry  by  the  light  brought  by  time, 
it  is  the  person,  not  the  poet,  who  lives  most.  Her  poetry 
as  poetry  is  imperfect.  She  is  an  incomplete  artist,  but  a 
complete  woman  ;  and  it  is  as  a  complete  woman  that  she 
will  stand  and  endure.  When  we  use  the  word  '  poet '  we 
mean,  of  course,  a  professional  poet.  Every  woman  is  a 
poet,  and  she,  who  was  more  intensely  woman  than  other 
women,  was,  in  this  way,  a  past-mistress  of  poetry. 

The  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  remain  her  master- 
piece— a  real  work  of  art,  because  they  are  the  fullest  expres- 
sion of  the  woman  in  her ;  and,  better  than  these,  the  best 
poem  that  she  created,  was  her  own  life  with  her  husband. 
This  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  she  is  comparatively  little 
read  by  the  present  generation ;  the  woman  of  one  age 
seldom  speaks  to  the  '  business  and  bosoms  '  of  her  followers 
fifty  years  later ;  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  in  her 
rebellions  as  much  as  in  her  sentiments,  was  Early  Victorian 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING         319 

in  seeming,  although  new  and  untried  forces  lay  below. 
The  lyre  is  no  longer  in  vogue ;  it  has  given  place  to 
other  instruments  more  scientific  than  musical.  Authors 
are  not  now  photographed  as  they  were  in  the  time  of  long 
ringlets — as  she  was — pensive,  unassuming,  intense,  with 
the  Coliseum  behind  her  ;  for  great  backgrounds  have  also 
gone  out  of  fashion.  'E.  B.  B.'  lived  in  the  days  of  great 
backgrounds ;  of  great  causes  and  great  awakenings ; 
the  days  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Garibaldi  ;  of  Kingsley  and 
Carlyle  and  the  Chartists  ;  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  Brother- 
hood ;  and  of  fermenting  ideas,  both  in  politics  and  in 
art.  The  walls  which  then  fell  before  trumpets  were  the 
walls  of  respectability — a  city  which,  though  rebuilt,  has 
never  again  occupied  the  same  dominant  position.  Un- 
convcntionality  has  even  become  conventional,  so  that 
many  of  the  barriers  that  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  made 
against  it  have  ceased  to  interest  her  less  struggling  suc- 
cessors. Her  attitude  to  moral  questions,  to  women  and 
to  the  poor,  to  art  and  its  relation  to  Nature,  has  grown  to 
be  the  general  attitude  of  cultivated  people — so  general, 
indeed,  that  we  are  apt  to  undervalue  her  as  an  innovator. 

O  Magi  of  the  east  and  of  the  west, 
Your  incense,  gold,  and  myrrh  are  excellent ! — 

What  gifts  for  Christ,  then,  bring  ye  with  the  rest  ? 
Your  hands  have  worked  well  :  is  your  courage  spent 

In  handwork  only  ?     Have  you  nothing  best, 
Which  generous  souls  may  perfect  and  present, 

And  He  shall  thank  the  givers  for  ?  no  light 
Of  teaching,  liberal  nations,  for  the  poor 

Who  sit  in  darkness  when  it  is  not  night  ? 
No  cure  for  wicked  children  ?    Christ — no  cure  ! 

No  help  for  women  sobbing  out  of  sight 
Because  men  made  the  laws  ?     No  brothel-lure 

Burnt  out  by  popular  lightnings  ? 

Thus  she  wrote  in  the  year  of  our  Great  Exhibition,  seated 
at  her  '  Casa  Guidi  Windows,'  and  it  required  some  courage 


320  NEW  AND  OLD 

to  publish  the  lines.  That  the  ideal  should  have  its  roots 
in  the  real,  that  the  real,  to  be  true,  must  be  enkindled  by 
the  ideal,  in  matters  of  human  love  as  well  as  in  matters 
of  art,  such  was  her  spontaneous  message  as  much  as  it 
was  that  of  her  husband.  Their  purpose  was  the  same,  but 
he  proclaimed  it  in  tones  strong  enough  to  reach  farther 
than  hers.  And  though  it  sounds  ordinary  now,  it  did  not 
sound  so  then,  when  the  art  of  Ary  Scheffer  and  the  cult  of 
sentiment  were  in  vogue. 

'  Beloved,'  it  sang,  'we  must  be  here  to  work  ; 
And  men  who  work  can  ouly  work  for  men, 
And,  not  to  work  in  vain,  must  comprehend 
Humanity  and  so  work  humanly 
And  raise  men's  bodies  still  by  raising  souls, 
As  God  did  first. ' 

'  But  stand  upon  the  earth,' 
1  said,  '  to  raise  them  (this  is  human  too, 
There's  nothing  high  which  has  not  first  been  low  ; 
My  humbleness,  said  One,  has  made  me  great !) 
As  God  did  last.  .   .  . 

The  man  most  man 
Works  best  for  men,  and,  if  most  man  indeed, 
He  gets  his  manhood  plainest  from  his  soul : 
While  obviously  this  stringent  soul  itself 
Obeys  the  old  law  of  development, 
The  Spirit  ever  witnessing  in  ours, 
And  Love,  the  soul  of  soul,  within  the  soul, 
Evolving  it  sublimely.' 

This  passage  from  Aurora  Leigh  is  idealism,  but  not  of  the 
rosy  kind ;  it  is  the  idealism  which  sees  the  ideal  in  the 
real,  often  in  the  ugly  ;  which  resulted  in  Les  Miserables,  in 
the  pictures  of  Jean  Francois  Millet,  in  Rossetti's  painting 
of  '  Found,'  or  in  his  poem  of  Jenny.  Thus,  Early  Victorian 
though  she  was  in  inward  form,  she  stood  no  less  at  the 
parting  of  the  ways,  at  the  source  of  modern  art,  and 
hailed  the  rising  sun.  Her  tendencies  were  forward  and, 
at  whatever  time  she  might  have  lived,  she  would  have 
been  of  les  Jewries,  unmindful  of  personal  risk  as  long  as 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING         821 

some  one  reached  the  goal  that  many  made  for.  The 
juvenile  audience  at  a  Gay  Lord  Quex,  the  babes  fed  on 
Ibsen,  can  afford  to  smile  at  Thackeray's  rejection  of  '  Lord 
Walter's  Wife'  as  being  too  'strong'  for  the  Cornhill 
Magazine  ;  yet,  mild  as  it  seems  to  us  now,  to  the  in-seeing 
eye  it  contains  the  germ  of  much — of  the  whole  protest  of 
the  spiritual  against  the  material  view  of  love.  It  requires 
a  woman's  hand  to  rend  the  veil  from  coarse  fact  with 
sullicicnt  delicacy  ;  to  know  where  to  lift,  and  where  to 
drop  it ;  and  Mrs.  Browning  was  practically  the  first  who 
dared  to  attempt  the  task.  Mrs.  Hemans  belonged  to  the 
literary  generation  before  her,  George  Eliot  to  the  one 
which  followed  after. 

Nowhere  has  she  shown  more  of  her  delicacy  and  courage 
than  in  her  chief  work,  Aurora  Leigh,  and  nowhere  has  she 
more  clearly  worked  out  her  message.  For  the  outcome 
of  the  poem,  the  solution  of  the  questions  there  set  forth, 
is  the  marriage,  after  many  struggles,  of  the  ideal  with  the 
real ;  of  Aurora  Leigh  the  poetess,  who  believes  in  working 
first  upon  the  souls  of  her  fellows,  with  Romney  Leigh  the 
philanthropist,  who  believes  in  working  first  upon  their 
bodies.  It  is  the  union  of  idea  and  action,  both,  as  she 
teaches,  inadequate  half-truths  till  they  join  forces.  And 
the  book  is  rich  in  other  notes  characteristic  of  her  singing. 
The  wronged  Marian  Erie,  who  lived  only  for  her  nameless 
child,  stands  out  as  the  embodiment  of  the  mother-love 
which  was  so  strong  in  Mrs.  Browning  herself.  And  all 
the  society  characters  in  the  story,  however  unnatural  they 
may  be,  serve  to  prove,  as  she  herself  says  elsewhere,  that 

This  age  shows,  to  my  thinking,  still  more  infidels  to  Adam 
Than  directly,  by  profession,  simple  infidels  to  God. 

There  are  obvious  absurdities  in  the  work.  But  Aurora 
and  Romney  live — in  imaginative  fashion ;  and  even 
Marian  Erie,  though  she  does  not  make  us  believe  in  her, 

x 


322  NEW  AND  OLD 

often  revives  in  our  eyes  some  sketch  by  Rossetti  of  Miss 
Siddal,  so  poetically  pure  that  it  seems  as  if  comparison 
with  fact  would  detract  from  its  own  inherent  truth.  The 
whole  theme  of  the  poem  recalls  the  kind  of  themes  chosen 
by  the  Pre-Raphaelites — Holman  Hunt's  '  Awakened  Con- 
science,' Rossetti's  '  Found,'  Martineau's  '  Last  Day  in  the 
Old  Home.'  There  are  other  things  to  remind  us  that  the 
poetess  was  writing  at  the  time  that  they  were  painting — 
the  same  desire  to  defy  conventions  and  return  to  Nature  ; 
the  same  amassing  of  detail,  sometimes  to  the  detriment 
of  the  whole  ;  the  same  chivalry  and  strenuousness  ;  the 
same  handling  of  a  realistic  subject  in  a  mystic  spirit,  pro- 
ducing an  unreal  effect.  There  is,  however,  one  wide 
difference  between  Mrs.  Browning  and  the  '  P.R.B.'s.' 
Purity  of  form,  a  clear-cut  outline,  were  essentials  of  their 
art.  Not  so  of  hers.  Her  forms  are  defective,  and  often 
either  rough  or  blurred  ;  she  seems  to  be  so  much  absorbed 
in  pouring  out  the  new  wine  that  she  does  not  care  much 
about  the  shape  of  the  old  bottles.  It  is  this  which  makes 
us  feel,  when  we  put  down  Aurora  Leigh,  that  she  would 
have  written  a  fine  novel ;  but  of  one  thing  we  are  sure — 
that  we  have  not  been  reading  a  poem.  It  may  be  urged 
that  she  composed  it  in  adverse  circumstances.  '  She  wrote 
in  pencil,  on  scraps  of  paper,  as  she  lay  on  the  sofa  in  her 
sitting-room  open  to  interruption  from  chance  visitors  .  .  . 
simply  hiding  the  paper  beside  her  if  any  one  came  in.' 

And  if  her  sense  of  form  were  found  lacking  only  in  this 
work  the  excuse  would  hold.  But  this  is  not  so.  Her 
poems,  however  sweet,  are  nearly  always  redundant,  un- 
concentrated,  too  long  and  overcrowded  with  images  ;  full, 
too,  of  the  repetition  of  thoughts  that  vary  but  slightly 
from  one  another.  The  sonnet  may  perhaps  be  taken  as  a 
final  proof  of  the  sense  of  form  possessed  by  a  poet.  It 
must  be  so  condensed,  so  clearly  outlined  ;  it  must  supply 
the  want  of  space  by  depth,  it  must  be  exquisitely  wrought 


ELIZABETH   BARRETT  BROWNING         323 

with  lines  deftly  interlaced.     But  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing's sonnets  do  not  stand  the  test ;  they  are  too  unchiselled, 
too  wordy.     We  except,  of  course,  the  Sonnets  from  the 
Portuguese,  because  there  the  white  heat  of  feeling  does  the 
work  of  the  potter's  furnace,  and  gives  them  a  shape  of 
their  own.      But    take  Discontent,   or  Tears,  or  Cheerful- 
ness taught   by    Reason,  and    you    will  wonder   why  they 
were  ever  cast  in  sonnet-mould  instead  of  being  written  as 
lyrics.     There  is  a  certain  hymn-like  quality  about  them, 
as,  indeed,   about  many  of  her  verses,   which  mars  their 
strength  and  their  design.     And  this  will  be  felt  the  more 
if  you  compare  them  with  the  work  of  her  contemporary, 
Christina  Rossetti,  the  only  other  poetess  whose  name  can 
be  mentioned  with  hers.     Many  of  Miss  Rossetti's  poems 
are  hymns  in  subject  and  intention,  and  yet  they  remain 
pure  poetry  because  their  distinction  of  feeling  is  enshrined 
in   distinction   of   form ;     because   their   burning  intensity 
refines,  but  never  destroys,  the  vessel  which  contains  it. 
Each  sonnet  in  the  Monna  Innominata  series  is  in  itself  a 
crystalline  gem,  giving  joy  by  its  mere  sound  ;    while  even 
the    Sonnets  from   the   Portuguese   would    not    satisfy    us 
apart  from  their  meaning.     Miss  Rossetti  had  the  Catholic 
mind ;     Mrs.    Browning's    spirit    was    Evangelical.     Miss 
Rossetti,   concentrated    and    cloistral,    was    the    completer 
poet;     Mrs.    Browning,    prodigal    of   herself,    absorbed   in 
helping  the  world,  was  the  greater  and  the  richer-natured 
woman.     Nor  are  her  poetic  defects  unaccountable.     She 
lived  before  all  the  talk  about  form  that  has  since  become 
current  coin  ;    she  had  a  fatal  facility  in  rhyming  and  no 
self-conceit    to   make   her  cautious.      And,   although,   fine 
Greek  scholar  that  she  was,  she  had  a  delicate  ear  for  the 
classics,  she  had  no  wish  to  return  to  their  methods.     '  Pan, 
Pan  is  dead,'  she   cried  ;    her  generation  had  a  new  song 
to  sing,  and  she  deliberately  gave  to  all  form  a  place  of 
secondary  importance.      '  To  bring  the   invisible  full  into 


324  NEW  AND  OLD 

play,  let  the  visible  go  to  the  dogs  ;  what  matters  ?  '  was 
her  motto  as  well  as  that  of  Robert  Browning ;  and,  in  her 
eyes,  nothing  did  matter  so  long  as  the  end  in  art  exceeded 
the  means. 

Mrs.  Browning  had  another  faculty  which  is  often  a  sub- 
stitute, and  sometimes  a  dangerous  one,  for  form — the 
faculty  for  melody.  It  is  this  which  gives  to  certain  of 
her  lines  a  magic,  a  pathos,  they  cannot  lose.  This  and  the 
gift  that  she  possesses  of  evoking  associations ;  of  reviving 
scents  and  sounds  of  past  years,  of  making  us  live  in  the 
past — the  past,  for  which  she  herself  had  a  close  and  almost 
morbid  affection.  '  I  am  strongly  a  creature  of  associa- 
tion,' she  once  wrote  to  a  friend  ;  and  her  love  of  harking 
back  for  herself  was  as  strong  as  her  power  of  looking  forward 
for  the  world.  Such  sentiments  are  almost  inseparable 
from  the  melodies  which  clothe  them,  and  there  are  certain 
of  her  verses,  seldom  whole  poems  (except,  perhaps,  The 
Poet  and  the  Bird,  or  A  Musical  Instrument,  or  Catarina 
to  Camoens),  that  haunt  the  brain  because  of  their  tune- 
fulness. 

In  the  pleasant  orchard-closes 

'God  bless  all  our  gains,'  say  we  ; 
But '  May  God  bless  all  our  losses ' 
Better  suits  with  our  degree 

is  like  a  snatch  of  song.      And  the  Mountain- gorses  ever 
golden — 

Ye  whom  God  preserveth  still, 
Set  as  lights  upon  a  hill, 
Tokens  to  the  wintry  earth  that  Beauty  liveth  still — 

are  not  likely  to  be  forgotten.     No  more  is  IsobeVs  Child  : 

The  poplars  tall  on  the  opposite  hill, 

The  seven  tall  poplars  on  the  hill, 

Did  clasp  the  setting  sun  until 

His  rays  dropped  from  him,  pined  and  still 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING        325 

As  blossoms  in  frost, 
Till  he  waned  and  paled,  so  weirdly  crossed, 
To  tlie  colour  of  moonlight  which  doth  pass 
( )ver  the  dank  ridged  churchyard  grass. 

The  worst,  perhaps,  of  this  melodic  gift  is  the  speed  with 
which  it  cloys  and  degenerates — its  easy  appeal  to  the 
crowd. 

Unless  you  can  muse  in  a  crowd  all  day 

On  the  absent  face  that  fixed  you  ; 
Unless  you  can  love,  as  the  angels  may, 

With  the  breadth  of  heaven  betwixt  you  ; 
Unless  you  can  dream  that  his  faith  is  fast, 

Through  believing  and  unbelieving  ; 
Unless  you  can  die  when  the  dream  is  past — 
Oh,  never  call  it  loving  ! 

— lines  such  as  these  have  too  much  of  the  tune  that  every 
man  can  learn.  And  yet  can  we  quarrel  with  the  defect, 
when  it  was  this  very  quality  of  popular  emotionalness 
that  enabled  her  Cry  of  the  Children  to  contribute,  as 
no  other  poem  has  done,  to  a  reform  in  the  law  of  the  land 
— one  of  the  noblest  achievements  ever  accomplished  by 
art  ?  Nor  did  she  lack  other  talents  which  corrected  her 
diffuseness.  Now  and  again  she  shows  an  inconsistent 
turn  for  aphorism,  as  in  Casa  Guidi  Windows  : 

An  ignorance  of  means  may  minister 
To  greatness,  but  an  ignorance  of  aims 
Makes  it  impossible  to  be  great  at  all. 

or  in  A  Vision  of  Poets  : 

Knowledge  by  suffering  entereth 
And  life  is  perfected  by  Death. 

The  painter's  gift,  too,  is  hers.  It  often  seems  as  if  she 
wrote  with  a  brush  rather  than  a  pen,  and  her  descriptions 
of  Nature,  whether  in  England  or  in  Italy,  show  her  at  her 
best  as  an  artist.  She  saw,  she  says  in  a  letter  of  1854, 
'  the  wonderful  Terni  by  the  way — that  passion  of  the  waters, 


326  NEW  AND  OLD 

which  makes  the  human  heart  seem  so  still.'  And  earlier 
in  the  year,  '  Oh  those  jagged  mountains  rolled  together 
like  pre-Adamite  beasts  and  setting  their  teeth  against  the 
sky — it  was  wonderful,'  she  writes  from  the  Baths  of  Lucca. 

If  we  think  of  Mrs.  Browning's  many-sidedness,  our 
wonder  at  her  character  grows.  She  had  lain  on  her  couch 
between  four  walls  for  twenty  years  of  her  existence,  suffer- 
ing constant  pain  and  weakness  ;  and  her  soul  triumphed 
over  both.  Shrinking  as  she  did  from  contact  with  the 
unknown,  she  had  the  courage  at  forty  to  know  and  to 
grasp  life  when  it  came  to  her  in  the  guise  of  love  ;  she  did 
not  flinch  from  her  secret  marriage,  or  from  her  wedding 
journey  to  Italy  ;  and  once  there,  in  the  full  blaze  of  happi- 
ness at  last,  she  did  not,  as  would  be  most  comprehensible, 
relapse  into  sublimated  selfishness,  but  spent  herself  in 
thought  for  others.  The  cause  of  the  Italians,  struggling 
for  a  united  Italy,  absorbed  her  energies.  She  loved  altars, 
she  loved  the  flame  upon  them  ;  and  she  kept  her  fires 
faithfully  alight,  for  Mazzini,  for  Louis  Napoleon,  for 
Garibaldi,  and,  most  of  all,  for  Cavour.  '  I  can  scarcely 
command  voice  or  hand  to  name  Cavour,''  she  wrote  at  his 
death.  '  That  great  soul  which  meditated  and  made  Italy 
has  gone  to  the  diviner  Country.  If  tears  or  blood  could 
have  saved  him  to  us,  he  should  have  had  mine.' 

In  her  great-heartedness  and  public  spirit,  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning  is  nearer  to  George  Sand  than  to  any  of 
her  own  countrywomen.  George  Sand  felt  for  the  French 
Republic  of  her  dreams  the  same  passion  of  hope,  of  dis- 
enchantment, of  untiring  aspiration  that  the  Englishwoman 
felt  for  Italy.  But,  in  Mrs.  Browning's  case,  disillusion 
did  not  last,  and  no  coup  oVEtat  stained  the  fame  of  Victor 
Emmanuel.  Both  were  women  of  1848,  the  period  of 
eternal  youth,  which  seemed  to  give  those  who  lived  through 
it  the  power  of  never  losing  their  ideals.  Both  were  in- 
veterate believers.     Both  were  generous  democrats  whose 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING         327 

written  pictures  of  the  poor  were  idylls  rather  than  realities. 
Both  would  rather  have  renounced  their  pens  than  ceased 
to  succour  human  suffering.  Perhaps  this  is  but  another 
way  of  saying  that  both  were  inspired  by  ardent  maternal 
devotion,  lavished  on  their  own  children  first,  then  on  the 
countless  children  of  others.  But  strong  as  is  the  like- 
ness between  these  two  leaders  of  the  Romantic  school,  in 
the  main  functions  of  life  their  positions  were  exactly 
reversed.  If  Mrs.  Browning  was  incomplete  artist  and 
complete  woman,  George  Sand  was  the  opposite.  Com- 
plete artist  she  was — but  she  was  incomplete  woman. 

Thou  large-brained  woman  and  large-hearted  man 
Self-called  George  Sand  !     Whose  soul  amid  the  lions 
Of  thy  tumultuous  senses  moans  defiance — 

thus  Mrs.  Browning  addressed  her.  Yet  while  we  see 
George  Sand's  '  woman-heart  beat  evermore  through  the 
large  flame,'  we  have  to  own  that  the  '  man  '  in  her  played 
too  strong  a  part.  '  Je  me  hate  de  vous  confesser,  ma 
Juliette,  que  pour  une  femme  e'est  une  inferiorite  que  se 
defeminiser,'  she  said  in  her  old  age  to  Madame  Adam. 

That  was  an  error  Mrs.  Browning  had  no  need  to  renounce. 
Robert  Browning  and  his  wife  will  live  as  classics  in  perfect 
married  love,  as  well  as  in  the  realm  of  poetry.  And 
typically  woman  as  she  was,  she  was  also  what  few  women 
are — creative.  '  You  are  wrong — quite  wrong — she  has 
genius,'  said  Browning  to  one  who  admired  his  work  more 
than  hers.  '  I  am  only  a  painstaking  fellow.  Can't  you 
imagine  a  clever  sort  of  angel  who  plots  and  plans,  and  tries 
to  build  up  something — he  wants  to  make  you  see  it  as  he 
sees  it,  hammering  into  your  head  the  thing  he  wants  you 
to  understand  ;  and  whilst  this  bother  is  going  on  God 
Almighty  turns  you  off  a  little  star — that 's  the  difference 
between  us.  The  true  creative  power  is  hers,  not  mine.' 
Shall  this  stand  as  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning's  epitaph  ? 
We  will  but  add  some  words  of  her  own  from  one  of  her 


328  NEW  AND  OLD 

letters  :  '  I  can't  look  on  the  earth  side  of  death.  .  .  . 
When  I  look  death  wards  I  look  over  death  and  upwards, 
or  I  can't  look  that  way  at  all.'     (1906.) 


THE   BRAHMAN   OF   CONCORD 

Journals  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.     Vols.  ix.  and  x. 
(Constable.     6s.  net  each.) 

'  Emerson,'  said  the  East  Indian  Mozoomdar,  '  had  all 
the  wisdom  and  spirituality  of  the  Brahmans.  Brahmanism 
is  an  acquirement,  a  state  of  being  rather  than  a  creed.' 
'  Emerson,'  says  Lowell,  '  awakened  us,  saved  us  from 
the  body  of  this  death.  .  .  .  Were  we  enthusiasts  ?  I  hope 
and  believe  we  were,  and  am  thankful  to  the  man  who  made 
us  worth  something  for  once  in  our  lives.'  '  He  was,'  says 
Mr.  Birrell,  '  once  upon  a  time,  and  for  a  long  time,  a 
veritable  sign  in  the  heavens.' 

Where,  we  ask,  as  we  put  down  these  last  two  volumes 
of  his  journals,  is  all  this  power  now  ?  As  far  as  the  present 
generation  is  concerned,  it  is  over.  This  is  a  fate  common 
perhaps  to  great  teachers.  They  form  a  generation  more 
potently  than  they  write  books  ;  they  make  the  men  who 
directly  follow  them  ;  and  just  because  their  work  is  living 
and  visible  it  cannot  endure  unchanged  like  a  book.  The 
next  age  suffers  reaction,  and  the  influence  of  the  teacher 
lives  on  only  as  a  cause  of  oscillation.  There  are  many 
reasons  why  Emerson  does  not  suit  the  young  people  of 
to-day,  why  he  even  irritates  them.  Any  academicness 
is  their  bugbear ;  and  Emerson  is  a  spiritual  don,  adoring 
youth,  yet  speaking  to  it  from  a  terrace  of  higher  ethical 
wisdom  and  with  an  assumption  of  knowing  its  needs. 
Emerson  was  suave,  serene,  uncircumscribed ;  no  man 
holds  sway  at  this  moment  who  does  not  hit  straight  from 
the   shoulder,  who   is   not  vehement   and   definite.     How 


THE  BRAHMAN  OF  CONCORD  829 

could  ether-loving  Emerson  prevail  at  a  time  when  men 
alternate  between  Nietzsche  and  Newman  ?  He  was  vague 
at  an  hour  when  men  were  revolting  from  Calvinism  and 
wanted  vagueness.  '  If  I  asked  what  was  left,  what  we 
carried  home,'  writes  Lowell,  '  it  would  have  been  enough 
if  we  had  said  that  something  beautiful  had  passed  that 
way.'  '  Something  beautiful '  would  ill  suit  the  modern 
conscience,  which  is  so  subject  to  the  despotism  of  the 
strident  and  the  abnormal.  But  is  it  enough  for  any  con- 
science ?  Is  the  food  offered  sufficiently  solid  to  nourish 
us  ?  It  is  not  altogether  the  fault  of  this  generation  that 
Emerson — in  England  at  least — has  ceased  to  concern  it. 
There  are  other  reasons,  and  these  journals  reveal  more 
than  one  of  them. 

To  begin  with,  Emerson's  serenity — born,  not  made — 
includes  serenity  as  regards  himself.     He  is  almost  smug. 

When  I  wrote  '  Representative  Men '  [runs  an  entry  of 
1863]  1  felt  that  Jesus  was  the  '  Representative  Man'  whom  I 
ought  to  sketch ;  but  the  task  required  great  gifts,  steadiest 
insight,  and  perfect  temper.  .  .  .  Theodore  Parker,  of  course, 
wished  to  write  this  book  ;  so  did  Maria  Child  in  her  '  Book  of 
Religions,'  and  Miss  Cobb,  and  Alcott,  and  I  know  not  how 
many  more. 

This  is  too  much  and  not  enough — it  is  shallow.  And 
where  warm  imagination  was  needed,  or  multiform  percep- 
tion, shallow  Emerson  sometimes  was.  What  understand- 
ing reader  of  Racine,  Ronsard,  Boileau,  would  let  pass 
these  observations  on  French  classicism  ? 

I  think  I  can  show  that  France  cleaves  to  the  form,  and  loses 
the  substance ;  as  in  the  famous  unities  of  her  drama;  and  in 
her  poetry  itself;  in  the  whole  '  classicality '  of  her  turn  of 
mind,  which  is  only  apery. 

The  fact  is  that  Emerson's  vision  was  limited  ;  his  gifts 
were  great  but  they  were  few,  and  as  an  artist  he  was 


330  NEW  AND  OLD 

inadequate.  He  judged  everything — art,  poetry,  even  Nature 
— by  its  effect  upon  conduct.  His  very  philosophy  often 
fails,  intellectually  speaking,  for  this  reason.  It  is  neither 
pure  thought  nor  pure  sentiment,  but  something  between 
the  two.  He  could  not  keep  it  disinterested,  free  from 
morals.  And  his  sentiment  falls  short  in  the  same  way. 
It  is  too  intellectual,  too  unwarmed  by  human  sympathy. 
When  he  writes,  in  1864,  that  '  they  who  should  be  friends 
cannot  pass  into  each  other.  Friends  are  fictions  founded 
on  some  single  momentary  experience,'  we  feel  his  words 
to  be  no  calm  victory  after  conflict,  no  sign  of  self-mastery, 
but  rather  the  expression  of  a  lack  in  him.  A  wistfulness 
here  would  have  made  him  richer. 

Perhaps  this  brings  us  to  the  main  reason  why  just  at 
present  Emerson  is  forgotten.  It  is  not  because  he  is  an 
idealist,  but  because  his  idealism  was  not  deeply  enough 
rooted  in  reality.  He  knew  too  little  of  the  fray,  of  the 
shoulder  to  shoulder  jostle  in  the  market-place  ;  and,  if 
not  too  much  of  Adirondack  philosophers,  too  little  of  the 
poor  and  unpresentable,  of  sorrow  and  suffering,  of  life's 
violence  and  life's  contrasts.  His  intimacy  with  the  sub- 
lime needed  these  contrasts  as  justification.  He  was,  so  to 
speak,  the  high  priest  of  spiritual  respectability — sanctify- 
ing it  sincerely,  yet  remaining  hierarchical.  But  this  kind 
of  want  is  precisely  that  which  is  least  pardoned  by  the 
young  who  come  after  ;  the  want,  also,  least  remarked  by 
contemporaries,  when  accompanied,  as  in  Emerson's  case, 
by  such  forcible  personal  magnetism. 

Mozoomdar  was,  indeed,  not  wholly  right.  If  Brahman- 
ism  is  '  a  state  of  being  rather  than  a  creed,'  Emerson  was 
not  a  true  Brahman.  Almost  unconsciously,  he  tried  to 
make  being  into  a  creed — after  the  practical  Western 
fashion,  which  asks  for  spiritual  results.  The  Brahmans 
are  mystics  ;  Emerson  was  a  transcendentalist ;  and  fine 
though  the  shade  between  the  two  looks  at  first,  it  is  really 


THE  BRAHMAN  OF  CONCORD  331 

a  strong  line  of  division  and  involves  a  profound  difference. 
Mysticism  is  never  vague  ;  it  always  means  experience — 
definite  experience  in  an  indefinite  region.  But  it  leaves 
the  indefinite  indefinite.  Emerson,  on  the  contrary, 
attempts  to  define  the  indefinite  ;  to  feel  after  some  spiritual 
formula  sublimated  beyond  recognition,  flexible  and  floating 
as  ether,  in  which  to  imprison  the  infinite.  He  is  a  kind  of 
celestial  doctrinaire.  For  transcendentalism  is  not  experi- 
ence, it  is  thought ;  it  is  born  of  the  intellect ;  it  is,  at 
best,  the  expression  of  experience.  Plotinus,  Behmcn,  Law, 
Blake,  Wordsworth  can  testify  to  states  of  being  as  clearly 
as  if  they  were  conversions  ;  these  states  are  part  of  their 
human  lives.  But  Emerson's  testimony  takes  shape  in 
beautiful  thoughts,  in  eloquent  ideals,  in  winged  reflections, 
in  things  said  and  not  in  human  documents. 

It  is  interesting  under  this  aspect  to  look  at  Emerson 
and  Wordsworth  together  :  at  least  in  their  attitude  towards 
Nature.  Wordsworth  may  moralise  about  Nature  as  much 
as  he  pleases,  but  that  is  not  Wordsworth.  The  true 
Wordsworth  is  non-moral,  is  almost  Nature  herself.  She 
sweeps  him  into  her  being ;  their  relations  towards  one 
another  are  quite  simple,  like  those  of  mother  and  son. 
Emerson  says  starry  things  about  earth  and  sky  ;  he  talks 
of  the  universe  with  Thoreau  ;  he  continually  considers 
Nature's  mysteries,  her  import,  but  he  never  seems  quite 
simple  about  her.  He  has  nothing  of  the  peasant's  feeling 
which  entered  into  Wordsworth's  love  of  the  earth  ;  or 
of  that  unreflecting  mystical  instinct  which  makes  Nature 
an  end  in  itself. 

And  there  is  another  reason  why  Emerson  is  bound  to 
fail  to-day.  Men  cannot  help  being  idealists,  however  they 
disguise  the  hated  fact ;  and  our  modem  anarchy,  our 
cult  of  chaotic  ugliness,  seems  to  be  little  more  than  a  kind 
of  inverted  idealism.  Fifty  years  ago  men  of  science  were 
proud  to  be  materialists  ;    they  had  made  of  matter  an 


332  NEW  AND  OLD 

austere  goddess,  nearly  akin  to  truth  and  worthy  of  good 
men's  worship.  Now,  materialists  are  so  uneasy  about 
that  goddess,  about  her  status  and  her  respectability,  that 
they  are  trying  to  achieve  the  impossible,  and  in  literature, 
painting,  music,  to  wring  a  kind  of  mysticism  out  of  matter. 
They  are  doctrinaires  of  anarchy  ;  they  have  no  use  for 
another  doctrinaire  with  a  hostile  and  a  truer  form  of  ideal- 
ism. This  idealism  it  is  which  constitutes  the  interest  of 
Emerson's  last  journals.  They  cover  a  period  of  twenty 
years,  from  1856  to  1876,  and  they  tell  of  his'  lecturing 
tours,  of  his  farewell  journey  to  England,  Paris,  Italy,  of 
his  home  life,  and  of  days  in  the  Adirondacks  ;  but  they 
might  for  the  most  part  be  written  anywhere.  Wherever 
he  went  he  inhabited  the  land  of  ideas  and  spoke  its  lan- 
guage. And  though,  here  and  again,  he  gives  that  vivid 
touch  of  portraiture  which  had  lent  his  pen  such  distinc- 
tion, the  personal  note  is  generally  absent  from  these  pages. 
There  are  too  many  generalisations  ;  for  he  who  tries  to 
define  the  indefinite  is  bound  to  land  in  large  assumptions  ; 
and  sometimes  his  conception  outruns  his  power  of  utter- 
ance and  leaves  his  expression  obscure.  But  as  a  rule  it 
is  clear,  even  though  it  is  elaborate,  and  his  creed  might 
quickly  be  epitomised  from  these  volumes. 

The  intellectual  power  [he  writes]  is  not  the  gift,  but  the 
presence  of  God.  Nor  do  we  reason  to  the  being  of  God,  but 
God  goes  with  us  into  nature,  when  we  go  or  think  at  all. 
Truth  is  always  new  and  wild  as  the  wild  air,  and  is  alive. 

All  physical  facts  are  words  for  spiritual  facts,  and  Imagination, 
by  naming  them,  is  the  interpreter,  showing  us  the  unity  of  the 
world. 

The  imagination  gives  all  the  value  to  the  day.  If  we  walk, 
if  we  work,  if  we  talk,  it  is  how  many  strokes  vibrate  on  the 
mystic  string. 

The  way  to  the  centre  is  everywhere  equally  short. 

And  the  centre  it  was  that  Emerson  made  for.     This  is 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS  333 

what  constitutes  his  permanent  value  in  the  world.  He 
proclaimed  the  immanence  of  the  Divine  to  an  age  that 
had  just  escaped  from  the  vindictive  despot  whom  it  called 
Jehovah.  Such  a  notion  of  God  we  of  to-day  have  left 
far  behind  us,  and  we  feel  none  of  the  relief  of  deliverance. 
But  Emerson's  faith,  whatever  its  momentary  fate,  still 
has  living  use  :  it  serves  as  an  abiding  defence  against 
reactionary  influences.  Its  very  foibles  help  it ;  its  elusive 
abstract  quality  is  too  indeterminate  to  provoke  a  retro- 
grade movement,  a  return  to  authority.  And  in  this  time 
of  extremes,  when  those  who  are  not  supermen  take  refuge 
from  spiritual  responsibility  by  running  back  to  systems, 
ritual,  tradition,  Emerson's  large  unemotional  outlook 
affords  us  no  unsafe  entrenchment.     (1914.) 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS1 

Saint,  mystic,  hero,  idealist — each  of  these  words  bears  a 
distinct  meaning,  yet  we  constantly  use  them  interchange- 
ably, and  rather  too  mistily.  This,  perhaps,  would  not 
much  concern  us,  were  it  not  a  fact  that  vague  conceptions 
are  apt  to  be  incompetent  and  to  befog  spiritual  issues. 
And  the  question  seems  to  have  a  sharper  point  just  now 
when  biography  has  been  setting  before  our  eyes  such  great 
types  of  sainthood,  heroism,  and  the  rest ;  when,  in  the 
course  of  one  year,  Florence  Nightingale,  Octavia  Hill,  St. 
Vincent  de  Paul,  have  lived  again  in  printed  pages  ;  when 
from  our  midst  has  passed  away  the  poet — the  practical 
poet — of  citizenship,  Canon  Barnett ;  or  when  we  read  the 
record  of  the  less  known,  no  less  striking,  Mother  Mabel 
Digby,  Mother-General  of   the  Order  of  the  Sacre  Cceur 

1  [A  paragraph  on  heroes,  which  was  inserted  in  haste  and  did  not  satisfy 
the  writer,  has  been  omitted  in  this  reprint,  and  some  sentences  written  after 
the  article  had  appeared  have  been  added.] 


334  NEW  AND  OLD 

through    the    dark    days     of    the    recent    persecutions    in 
France. 

What,  first  of  all,  is  a  saint  ?  A  saint  is  an  artist  in  holi- 
ness, one  who  is  good  for  the  joy  he  feels  in  goodness  without 
ulterior  aim,  who  forgets  his  own  soul  in  his  love  for  the 
souls  of  others.  He  is,  if  you  like,  a  spiritual  genius,  the 
owner  of  inaccessible  secrets  of  sanctity,  of  which  he  is 
unconscious,  by  which  he  lives.  Above  all,  he  loves  good 
more  than  he  hates  evil.  Pascal,  however  holy,  was  for 
this  reason  no  saint.  He  dreaded  sin  more  than  he  loved 
his  brother  men.  He  invented  the  omnibus  for  the  poorer 
of  them,  but  he  shrank  from  association — from  the  risks 
of  love.  He  was  happier  fighting  the  Jesuits  than  in  fellow- 
ship with  Port  Royal.  The  true  Puritan  can  perhaps  never 
be  the  true  saint ;  for  the  power  of  enjoyment,  the  saint's 
enjoyment  of  holiness,  lies  at  the  root  of  saintliness,  and 
he  says  '  Thou  shalt '  before  he  says  '  Thou  shalt  not.' 
It  is  asceticism  which  has  proclaimed  him  as  the  enemy  of 
the  artist,  and  so  misapprehended  the  significance  of  both. 
Saint  and  artist,  alike,  delight  in  self-expression,  it  is  the 
condition  of  their  being  ;  and  to  both  the  outward  form  is 
inseparable  from  the  inward  meaning. 

A  saint  is  necessarily  a  mystic,  but  a  mystic  is  not  neces- 
sarily a  saint.  A  mystic — to  sum  up  briefly — is  one  who 
lays  stress  upon  being  rather  than  upon  doing,  while  a 
saint  holds  the  balance  between  the  two  ;  he  expresses 
being  by  doing,  and  regards  the  one  as  incomplete  without 
the  other.  Being,  it  is  true,  must  come  first;  it  is  the  essence 
of  holiness,  and  works  without  faith  are  nought.  Prayer 
and  contemplation  with  him  become  an  energy — an  action 
for  others  ;  and  a  life  of  love  for  mankind  there  must  be 
to  prove  belief.  A  mystic,  in  so  far  as  he  is  a  mystic,  feels 
no  such  necessity  ;  the  one  thing  needful  for  him  is  the 
direct  communion  of  his  spirit  with  God.  For  the  rest,  he 
may  neglect  his  fellow-creatures,  he  may  even  be  inhuman, 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS  335 

as  some  mystics  have  been.  The  only  demand  he  makes 
is  for  the  heights,  for  those  peaks  which  in  themselves 
encourage  remoteness.  The  ecstasy  of  intercourse  with 
the  divine,  the  intoxication  of  solitude  he  must  have,  and 
he  must  have  them  often  ;  but  these  very  conditions  are 
far  from  helping  a  return  to  common  life,  or  acting  as  a 
barrier  to  intellectual  scorn.  The  true  mysticism  implies 
abstract  intellect,  the  true  sanctity  does  not.  The  mystic 
asks  for  light  first,  the  saint  for  lire  ;  and  the  highest 
and  rarest  types  are  those  in  which  both  elements  are 
made  one. 

Of  these  types  of  a  high  altruism,  as  of  the  hero,  one  thing 
can  equally  be  said  :  each  one  is  an  idealist ;  each  one  sees 
what  might  be  in  what  is,  and  strives  to  realise  his  vision. 
The  love  of  the  ideal  is,  so  to  speak,  the  common  source 
from  which  saint,  hero,  mystic  draw  their  spiritual  suste- 
nance. And  saint,  hero,  mystic  are  again  alike  in  this  : 
they  care  for  goodness  in  preference  to  morality,  often  in 
opposition  to  it.  To  them  the  garden  is  all-important,  the 
fence  that  guards  it  not  so — that  paling  which  each  genera- 
tion in  turn  knocks  down  and  builds  up  anew,  according 
to  its  especial  needs.  And  goodness  also,  although  it  is 
not  destroyed,  is  re-defined  by  the  good  men  of  every  age. 
They  have  sought  purity  by  many  and  divers  ways  ;  through 
asceticism  and  superstition,  through  control  over  Nature 
and  through  knowledge  ;  but  their  fundamental  object  is 
always  the  same.  They  endeavour  to  set  the  will  free  from 
the  ego,  to  make  human  beings  less  selfish  and  more  them- 
selves, to  follow  after  kindness  and  to  learn  love.  Sincere 
goodness,  like  sincere  art,  is  an  attempt  to  wrest  what  is 
permanent  out  of  the  transitoriness  of  things. 

The  way  to  live  with  God  is  to  live  with  ideas — not  merely 
to  think  about  ideals,  but  to  do  and  suffer  for  them.  Those 
who  have  to  work  on  men  and  women  must,  above  all  things, 
have  their  spiritual  ideal,  their  purpose  ever  present. 


336  NEW  AND  OLD 

I  believe  ,  .  .  in  the  service  of  man  being  the  service  of 
God,  the  growing  into  a  likeness  with  Hioi  by  love,  the  being 
one  with  Him  in  will  at  last,  which  is  Heaven.  I  believe  in 
the  plan  of  Almighty  Perfection  to  make  us  all  perfect.  And 
thus  I  believe  in  the  Life  Everlasting. 

The  mystical  state  is  the  essence  of  common  sense. 

These  sentences,  the  last  above  all,  make  the  epitome  of 
Florence  Nightingale's  creed.  And,  under  the  heading 
'  Drains,'  '  the  question,'  she  wrote,  '  is  not  whether  a  thing 
is  done  for  the  State  or  the  Church,  but  whether  it  is  done 
with  God  or  without  God.' 

I  care  very  little  to  express  faith  anywhere  but  in  life  [said 
Octavia  Hill].  .  .  .  God  has  been  always  pleased  to  build  His 
best  bridges  with  human  piers,  not  angels,  nor  working  by 
miracles  ;  but  He  has  always  let  us  help  Him,  if  we  will,  never 
letting  our  faults  impede  His  purposes  when  we  struggled  that 
they  should  not. 

The  people  round,  and  all  we  see  and  hear,  leave  a  kind  of 
mark  on  us,  an  impression  of  awe,  or  pity,  and  wonder,  or 
sometimes  love.  .  .  .  How  hard  it  is  to  do  justly  and  love 
mercy  and  walk  humbly. 

In  God  [wrote  Canon  Barnett]  we  are  alive  and  move  and  have 
our  being.  .  .  .  Through  God  we  can  therefore  act  on  others. 
Prayer  is  work. 

It  is  unbelief  in  God  which  makes  much  effort  ineffective 
.  .  .  not  disbelief,  but  just  unbelief  in  a  Power  Whose  will  is 
being  done. 

In  each  of  us  [we  quote  St.  Vincent  de  Paul]  there  is  a  grain 
of  the  almighty  power  of  God,  and  that  should  be  a  great 
motive  for  hope. 

If  we  take  a  person  who  fixes  his  love  on  God  only — a  soul 
.  .  .  which  has  soared  in  contemplation,  and  .  .  .  limits  himself 
to  this  unfailing  source  of  satisfaction,  and  does  not  trouble 
himself  about  his  neighbour;  and  then  take  another  who  loves 
God  with  his  whole  heart  and  for  the  love  of  God  loves  his 
neighbour  also,  however  faulty  and  repulsive  .  .  .  which  of 
these  two  .   .   .  has  the  most  perfect  sort  of  love  ? 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS  887 

As  it  is  the  function  of  fire  to  give  light  and  warmth;  so  is  it 
the  function  of  love  to  spread  the  sense  of  love. 

In  the  pronouncements  of  these  four  great  pioneers — the 
three  modern  contemporaries,  the  fourth,  their  predecessor, 
the  creator  of  lay  charities  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  before 
them — we  shall  first  be  struck  by  the  likeness,  by  the  same 
mystical  note  in  each.  Work  in  God  and  through  Him  is 
their  gospel.  And  thus  they  escape  all  the  perils  of  mysti- 
cism. Like  wine,  mysticism  is  dangerous  when  drunk  alone 
without  food.  Every  sacramental  thought  needs  both 
bread  and  wine.  And  to  each  of  these  four  vision  seemed 
useless  without  action.  But  further  reflection  reveals  deep 
differences.  In  the  sayings  of  Florence  Nightingale  the 
intellectual  quality  leads,  the  abstract  mind  is  there  ;  in- 
tellect also  it  is  which  is  salient  in  the  utterance  of  Canon 
Barnett.  But  in  the  words  of  Octavia  Hill  and  of  St. 
Vincent  it  is  the  heart  which  predominates,  the  personal 
element  which  inspires  them.  The  first  two  make  for  the 
good  of  the  world ;  the  last  two  for  the  good  of  the  individual 
soul.  The  first  two  are  spiritually  minded  reformers ;  the 
last  two  are  saints.  Not  that  feeling  is  absent  from  the 
reformers — far  from  it ;  but  it  is  feeling  sublimated  by 
thought :  the  saints  also  think,  but  their  intellects  are 
kindled  by  emotion.  In  the  case  of  St.  Vincent  it  is  far 
more  than  this.  Although  he  had  the  nature  of  the  saint, 
and  so  the  saint  in  him  came  foremost,  his  capability  was 
as  signal  as  his  holiness.  He  was  the  initiator  of  organised 
charity  outside  the  cloister — of  the  Sisters  of  Chanty,  bound 
by  no  convent  vows ;  of  outdoor  relief,  of  aid  to  convicts, 
of  hospital  reform  ;  he  utilised  the  wealth  and  service  of 
the  women  of  fashion  for  that  Hotel  Dieu  of  Paris  which, 
from  being  a  den  of  infection,  became  the  prototype  of 
modern  institutions.  He  did  the  organising  work  of  a 
Florence  Nightingale  on  starvation  diet  and  under  sternest 

T 


338  NEW  AND  OLD 

discipline,  yet  never  lost  his  personal  touch  of  every  human 
soul  with  which  he  dealt,  or  his  large  and  warm  indulgence 
for  every  one  excepting  himself.  But  he  was  an  exception, 
and  the  distinction  remains  between  the  saint  and  the  intel- 
lectual reformer.  It  is  no  mere  subtlety.  It  means  a  real 
division  between  two  classes  of  people  important  for  the 
work  of  the  world.  What  does  that  difference  signify  ? 
Can  we  find  the  answer  if  we  study  these  great  achievers  ? 

Among  them  three  were  creators.  The  fourth,  Canon 
Barnett,  was  an  inspirer,  a  source  of  action  rather  than  an 
originator.  He  was  an  idealist,  a  converter  of  the  real  into 
the  ideal,  the  bearer  of  a  message.  And  his  message  was 
that  the  perfect  citizen  of  London  was  no  less  the  citizen 
of  the  unseen  city  of  God.  But  the  remaining  three  stand 
for  concrete  realities  introduced  by  them  into  the  world  : 
St.  Vincent  for  organised  charity ;  Florence  Nightingale 
for  the  modern  hospital  for  nursing,  for  Army  reforms  ; 
Octavia  Hill  for  the  housing  of  the  poor,  and  for  her  civilis- 
ing system  of  personal  rent-collecting.  Only  St.  Vincent 
was  equally  endowed  as  a  saint  and  an  organiser.  Florence 
Nightingale  was  a  practical  genius,  a  mystic,  and  a  hero — 
not  a  saint ;  Octavia  Hill  was  a  saint  and  an  inspired 
reformer,  with  remarkable  practical  gifts  which  grew  from 
her  inspiration. 

Both  these  women  had  vocation  in  the  truest  sense. 
Each  set  herself  apart  in  a  cloister  made  out  of  a  great 
purpose,  yet  moved  freely  in  the  world.  Miss  Hill  was  more 
of  the  artist,  swayed  by  form  and  colour,  compelled  by 
love  of  Nature.  Miss  Nightingale  was  more  of  the  thinker 
and  the  scientist ;  statistics  moved  her  much,  Nature 
affected  her  but  little,  and  when,  as  rarely,  art  stirred  her, 
it  was  for  its  moral  import,  as  in  her  enthusiasm  for  Michael 
Angelo.  Her  friendship  for  Jowett,  that  of  Miss  Hil0for 
Ruskin,  were  like  symbols  of  the  two  women's  natures. 
But  the  main  difference  between  them  lies  in  their  attitude 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS  339 

towards  their  fellow-creatures.  Octavia  Hill  loved  them  ; 
Florence  Nightingale  only  loved  the  subjects  of  her  kingdom 
— her  soldiers,  her  nurses,  her  colleagues  ;  for  the  rest  she 
had  a  good  deal  of  intellectual  scorn — which  included  all 
those  who  did  not  suit  her.  The  enemy  she  chose  to  fight 
was  official  stupidity,  and  that  is  not  the  enemy  to  soften 
contempt.  '  Man  must  create  mankind,'  such  is  her  own 
summary  of  her  belief  that  through  our  mastery  of  the 
laws  of  health  and  social  welfare  we  form  each  other,  body 
and  soul.  But  a  creator  is  presumably  superior  to  what 
he  creates,  and  such  a  creed  as  hers  does  not  foster  the 
spirit  of  indulgence.  She  was  annoyed  when  her  staff 
married,  and  in  her  eyes  work  always  came  before  family  ; 
she  felt  no  need  of  seeing  her  own  unless  they  were  help- 
ing her  achievement.  Not  that  separation  mattered  ;  all 
great  pioneers  in  goodness  have  had  their  call ;  have,  at 
whatever  cost,  gone  about  their  Father's  business.  Nor 
need  we  join  in  the  charge  which  has  been  made  against 
her,  that  she  overdrove  her  labourers.  Who  shall  blame 
her  if  she  set  small  value  on  life  by  the  side  of  what  we  live 
for  ?  But  it  may  with  truth  be  urged  that  the  human 
love  in  her  was  not  as  great  as  her  demand  for  efficiency. 

Neither  of  these  two  great  spirits  could  have  done  what 
she  did  except  in  her  own  fashion.  Florence  Nightingale, 
the  more  glorious,  worked  in  the  block  ;  Octavia  Hill  on 
each  separate  incident,  yet  without  losing  sight  of  the 
whole — '  a  kind  of  Cecil  in  her  sphere,'  as  some  one  said  of 
her.  She  did  her  task  anywhere,  constantly  surprised  at 
the  sympathy  she  found.  Florence  could  accomplish  hers 
only  in  seclusion  from  all  common  conditions,  and  she  com- 
plained of  the  dearth  of  sympathy,  because  she  reckoned 
no  one  sympathetic  who  did  not  yield  her  his  whole  time 
and  powers.  She  did  not  see  many  different  kinds  of  people, 
nor  did  she  come  into  direct  contact  with  those  baffling 
problems  of  moral  evil  which  make  us  acknoAvledge  that 


340  NEW  AND  OLD 

we  are  all  sailing  in  the  same  boat.  She  worked  on  a  high 
plane  above  the  world  ;  Octavia  in  the  crowd — '  not,'  she 
wrote,  '  as  one  standing  aloof  or  above,  but  as  a  fellow- 
worker,  fellow-sufferer.' 

This  last  phrase  brings  us  down  to  bed-rock.  The  real 
difference  between  these  two  is  one  of  humility.  Octavia 
Hill  lived  by  it,  Florence  Nightingale  did  not ;  and  they 
represent  more  than  themselves,  they  are  types  of  two 
orders  of  human  being.  Humility  is  perhaps  the  rarest  of 
all  qualities,  hardest  to  capture,  hardest  to  define.  It  is 
not  self-abasement,  for  that  imports  the  thought  of  self, 
and  the  humble  man  is  so  full  of  the  good  in  others  that  he 
has  no  time  to  brood  on  his  own  imperfections.  It  is  not 
modesty,  for  modesty  is  often  concerned  with  pride — is  a 
code  of  moral"  taste  used  between  man  and  man.  But 
humility  is  the  attitude  of  man  towards  God,  as  expressed 
in  his  attitude  towards  his  fellows.  And  those  who  stop 
at  humility  towards  God  alone,  and  thus  escape  all  risk  of 
contradiction,  are  not  really  humble  at  all.  Gordon  was 
of  them,  so  was  Florence  Nightingale,  so  was  Tolstoi ;  they 
knew  their  distance  from  Heaven,  but  it  did  not  make  them 
patient  with  their  neighbours. 

Humility  is  not  native  to  Protestant  countries,  where 
reason  makes  for  fearless  freedom.  Amongst  Catholics  it  is 
an  essential  virtue,  the  virtue  of  discipline,  of  the  Orders. 
Within  the  cloisters  and  outside  them  it  is  strenuously  culti- 
vated, to  the  destruction  of  the  individual.  This  art  of  self- 
effacement  it  is  which  produces  unknown  heroic  Superiors, 
Sisters,  missionaries,  such  as  Mother  Mabel  Digby  records, 
nameless  victims  of  persecution  and  massacre,  whose  con- 
demnation to  namelessness  is  part  of  their  day's  work  ;  the 
same  self-effacement  that  reared  and  sculptured  the  cathe- 
drals and  left  no  trace  of  who  and  how.  But  this  system, 
which  gives  their  chance  to  the  average  and  the  small, 
means  death,  or  cramp,  to  the  exceptions.     No  one  can  tell 


SAINTS  AND  MYSTICS  341 

what  the  large-brained  Mabel  Digby  could  have  been,  had 
her  originality  had  full  play,  instead  of  being  suppressed 
and  tamed  by  self-laceration.  The  Catholic  system  has 
produced  the  great  obscure.  But  it  was  reserved  for  the 
Protestant  atmosphere  to  produce  the  stars  of  modern 
philanthropy,  the  individuals  who  needed  free  develop- 
ment, an  Elizabeth  Fry,  a  Florence  Nightingale,  an  Octavia 
Hill.  And  we  can  add  a  Vincent  de  Paul  only  because  he 
was  greater  than  his  system.  '  To  fulfil  nought  but  what 
charity  demands  and  His  will  requires  ...  to  imitate  our 
Lord  in  the  hiddenness  of  His  life  ' — this  is  his  single- 
hearted  aim.  He  was  humble  without  knowing  it,  and  in 
spite  of  the  rules  for  humility  that  he  imposed  upon  himself. 

For  it  is  the  worst  of  this  hothouse  humility,  grown  by 
prescription,  that  its  growth  is  self-conscious,  arrested  by 
investigation,  weakened  by  puerile  practices — -that  it  centres 
a  man  upon  himself.  Thus  it  defeats  its  own  ends,  since 
true  humility  gets  rid  of  the  mere  shadow  of  the  ego.  The 
unprofessionally  humble  will  even  sacrifice  their  humility 
to  spread  an  idea  ;  they  take  no  thought  for  their  personal 
salvation.  St.  Vincent  was  big  enough  to  be  able  to  think 
of  himself  detachedly  as  a  source  of  knowledge  for  his  deal- 
ings with  others,  but  for  most  men  introspection  is  apt  to 
falsify  the  currency.  For  this  kind  of  lowliness  is  founded 
on  fear,  on  the  resolute  sacrifice  of  the  intellect,  on  a  with- 
drawal from  the  panic  of  temptation,  on  flight  instead  of 
conquest ;  and  no  virtue  founded  upon  negation — upon  any 
caution  or  any  dourness,  whether  preached  by  Law  or  Calvin, 
St.  Cyran  or  St.  Simeon  Stylites — is  a  safe  asset  for  the 
majority.  It  lands  them  in  childishness.  If  the  indepen- 
dent Protestant  standard  is  apt  to  result  in  the  Pharisee, 
the  votary  of  rule  is  too  often  puerile,  and  puerility  is  as 
corroding  as  want  of  discipline. 

Octavia  Hill  had  no  use  for  special  exercises  or  prescribed 
services  to  the  poor  for  the  sake  of  her  soul.     She  served 


342  NEW  AND  OLD 

them  spontaneously  for  love  ;   she  was  a  free  saint,  and  her 
humility  grew  like  the  lilies  of  the  field. 

I  would  wish  [she  said]  most  lovingly  to  grasp  the  whole 
purpose  of  each  life  ...  to  find  the  point,  or  points,  as  one 
always  does,  in  which  every  one  is  so  much  greater  than  one- 
self that  one  bows  before  it  in  joy  and  cries  '  Thank  God  for  it.' 

And  : 

I  wish  ...  I  were  better  able  to  let  people  see  what  I  feel. 
.  .  .  Sometimes  people  almost  make  me  wonder  whether  I  love 
in  some  other  poorer  way  than  most  people,  after  all.  ...  I  do 
so  often  tremble  lest  I  should  spoil  all  by  growing  despotic  or 
narrow-minded  ...  so  few  people  tell  me  where  I  am  wrong. 

Florence  Nightingale  and  Octavia  Hill,  both  of  them 
unhampered  by  any  spiritual  gentilities,  suffered  from  none 
of  the  duperies  or  excesses  of  outraged  Nature.  Without 
fear  and  without  reproach,  they  spent  the  intellects  God 
had  given  them  for  His  purposes.  Both  prove  alike  the 
power  of  faith — the  power  that  has  been  proved  by  all 
mystics,  by  all  saints,  by  all  heroes  that  have  been  since 
the  world  began.     (1914.) 


THE   FRENCH   POINT   OF   VIEW 

George  Meredith.     His  Life,  Genius,  and  Teaching,  from  the 

French  of  Constantin  Photiades.     Rendered  into  English 

by  Arthur  Price.     (Constable.     6s.  net.) 
Richard  Jefferies.     Etude  d'une  Personnalite.      Par  Clinton 

Joseph  Masseck.     (Paris  :  Larose.) 
George    Peele   (1558-1596).     Par    P.    H.    Cheffaud.     (Paris; 

Felix  Alcan.     4f.) 

Most  moral  misunderstandings,  such  especially  as  exist 
between  nations,  arise  from  the  different  constructions  put 
upon  the  term  Nature.     The  word,  indeed,  includes  as  many 


THE  FRENCH  POINT  OF  VIEW  343 

meanings  as  '  Love,'  that  other  word,  almost  Nature's 
synonym  ;  and  upon  the  use  and  misuse  of  4  Love  '  and 
'  Nature  '  have  been  founded  the  biggest  mistakes,  as  well 
as  the  finest  creeds,  in  Western  history — all  its  '  isms,'  from 
Asceticism  and  Puritanism  to  Naturalism,  Platonism,  Pan- 
theism, Stoicism,  Materialism,  Idealism — even  Mysticism, 
the  religion  of  being  before  doing,  of  love  before  faith.  Nature 
has  figured  to  great  spirits  as  the  devil ;  as  the  star-sown 
universe,  the  hem  of  God's  garment ;  as  the  monster  red 
in  tooth  and  claw  ;  as  the  pitiful  mother  gathering  her 
tired  children  to  her  breast ;  as  the  indifferent  Moloch 
who  devours  them ;  as  the  law-abiding,  self-contained 
antithesis  to  man's  restless  and  anarchic  passions  ;  as  the 
ungoverned  being  of  dire  caprices  ;  as  the  '  Nature  '  who 
receives  but  what  we  give ;  as  the  greater  life  outside 
and  beyond  us  ;  as  the  primal  simplicity,  the  Hygieia, 
who  beckons  to  the  jaded  victims  of  civilisation  ;  as  the 
incoherent  bundle  of  instincts  holding  orgy  in  war  and 
revolution. 

It  is  thus  that  Nature  has  taken  a  different  complexion 
in  every  country  according  to  the  national  temperament, 
while  the  builders  of  Babel  fondly  figure  to  themselves  as 
acting  upon  the  self-same  password.  And  their  illusion 
is  of  no  slight  import.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  every 
generation  of  ideas  has  begun  or  ended  with  some  move- 
ment concerning  Nature — an  impulse  towards,  a  reaction 
against  her.  From  the  days  of  Greek  philosophy  and  before 
them,  from  the  times  of  the  Fathers  and  St.  Augustine  and 
the  conflict  between  Freewill  and  Predestination,  the  pivot 
has  remained  the  same.  Medievalism,  with  its  chivalrous 
artifices  and  monastic  ideals — with  its  effort  to  order  and  to 
feudalise  men's  appetite — made  against  Nature.  She  took 
her  revenge  in  the  Renaissance,  the  heyday  of  humanists 
and  artists,  her  preux  chevaliers,  who  vindicated  her  rights. 
So  did  Luther  and  the  first  reformers.     But  the  pendulum 


344  NEW  AND  OLD 

oscillated,  and  the  Puritans  worked  havoc  in  men's  con- 
sciousness with  a  sourer  asceticism  than  the  world  had  ever 
known.  Then  came  the  period  of  the  grand  style  and  of 
the  prominence  of  the  Roi  Soleil  in  Europe.  Nature  was 
drugged  into  sleep,  was  counterfeited  by  etiquette  and  Le 
Notre,  by  Lely  and  Kneller,  in  their  false  arcadias,  with 
intricate  side-alleys  for  intrigue.  Rousseau  followed  them 
— Nature's  Peter  the  Hermit,  who  preached  the  Crusade 
without  a  Cross,  proclaiming  the  return  to  Nature's  bosom 
and  practising  his  precepts  by  dropping  his  children  at  the 
door  of  the  Foundling  Hospital  in  Paris.  The  world  took 
up  his  doctrine,  and  the  French  Revolution  was  the  result : 
to  be  succeeded  by  natural  movements  everywhere — in  the 
Lake  School  of  English  poetry — in  the  landscape-painters 
of  France  and  England — in  the  educational  systems  born 
of  Miss  Edgeworth  and  Pestalozzi — no  less  in  the  abolition 
of  slavery,  in  land  reforms  and  in  repeals  of  corn  laws. 
Upon  these  there  came  the  Second  Renaissance,  the  reign 
of  Science  :  the  investigation  of  Nature's  laws,  the  arro- 
gance of  discovery,  the  protest  of  the  Oxford  Movement, 
of  Pre-Raphaelite  visions,  and  what  not ;  until,  if  such  a 
light  survey  be  permitted  us,  we  reach  the  creeds  of  the 
present  day. 

But  no  difference  in  regard  to  definitions  of  '  Nature  '  has 
been  so  marked  or  so  confusing  as  that  between  France  and 
England — since  the  days  of  the  Puritans  (till  then  we  were 
as  natural  as  our  neighbours  over  the  Channel).  In  France 
'  Nature  '  has,  before  all  else,  meant  the  spontaneous  rela- 
tions of  man  and  woman.  In  England  Nature  has  first 
meant  the  face  of  the  universe  and  the  spirit  that  it  breathes 
upon  us.  Rabelais  and  Montaigne  looked  frankly  at  the 
sexes  and  the  problems  they  create ;  Bacon  devoted  him- 
self to  probing  the  secrets  of  the  earth.  For  us  no  Flaubert ; 
for  them  no  Lake  School.  Unhampered  by  conviction  of 
sin,  the  French  are  natural,  and  look  upon  as  natural  the 


THE  FRENCH  POINT  OF  VIKW  345 

half  of  what  we  regard  as  moral,  thereby  causing  misappre- 
hensions that  obscure  main  issues  and  falsify  values  <>f 
conduct.  At  this  moment  England  is  discovering  what 
France  has  always  known — that  impropriety  and  immorality 
are  not  identical  and  that  Nature  has  her  say  in  such  things  ; 
is  re-discovering  Nature,  in  short,  with  much  clatter  from 
novelists  and  much  acclamation  of  the  ballet  and  the  cult 
of  the  body — too  much  fuss  about  an  obvious  matter.  And 
France,  it  would  seem,  from  the  books  before  us,  has  lately 
awakened  to  the  simple  sense  of  earth  and  sky  and  what 
they  bring  us,  apart  from  dramatic  effect.  In  either  case 
exceptions  have  appeared  within  the  last  generations.  In 
England  arose  Meredith  to  tell  men  in  prose  and  verse  that 
what  is  primal  cannot  die  and  that  the  life  of  the  woods  is 
linked  to  that  of  men — to  tell  it  and  to  be  misunderstood. 
In  lesser  degree,  with  far  less  perfect  art,  Richard  Jefferies 
proclaimed  the  same  truth ;  and  long  before  these,  before 
Puritanism,  before  the  question  was  a  matter  for  hostilities 
and  the  need  of  champion-philosophies,  the  great  Eliza- 
bethan poets  had  sung  to  the  same  tune  in  all  simplicity. 
This  the  Frenchmen  who  have  chosen  these  three  writers — 
Meredith,  Jefferies,  and  the  Elizabethan,  George  Peele — 
have  well  understood  ;  and  it  is  their  interpretation  of  the 
English  attitude  towards  Nature  that  makes  the  chief  point 
of  interest  in  the  volumes  before  us.  Though  sound  and 
well-written  expositions  of  their  themes,  they  would  not 
otherwise  stand  out  as  remarkable  ;  for  even  the  book  on 
Meredith,  the  most  distinguished  of  the  trio,  with  its  clever 
reports  of  his  talk,  fails  to  tell  us  anything  new  ;  in  great 
measure,  perhaps,  just  because  the  writer  passes  quickly 
over  Meredith's  criticisms  of  men  and  women — so  often 
like  those  of  a  Frenchman  and  hence  familiar  to  him — and 
lingers  over  the  English  characteristics  already  known  to  us. 
The  author  of  Richard  Jefferies,  indeed,  admires  what  to  us 
appear  Jefferies's  foibles,  his  dithyrambs  about  the  Universe, 


346  NEW  AND  OLD 

his  over-use  of  the  lyre,  so  nearly  approaching  French 
methods  ;  while  the  study  of  George  Peele,  offering  a  new 
field  to  France,  is  to  us  but  a  piece  of  our  literary  history, 
and,  again,  only  striking  because  illustrative  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan outlook. 

The  main  point  of  a  French  interpretation  of  English  per- 
ceptions is  that  it  must  unconsciously  reveal  the  soul  of  the 
interpreters  and  the  contrast  between  two  national  tempers. 
Thus  it  is,  and  when  we  close  the  volumes  beside  us  one 
impression  stands  out  foremost.  To  the  French,  the  love 
of  Nature  for  Nature's  sake  is  no  part  of  their  daily  lives, 
as  revealed  at  least  in  their  literature.  That  love  seems 
to  have  found  refuge  alone  in  other  art — in  their  great  school 
of  landscape  painting.  There  have,  of  course,  been  excep- 
tions. As  we  have  had  our  Meredith  they  have  had  their 
Senancour,  their  George  Sand,  their  Andre  Theuriet,  and 
others.  But  they  were  exceptions,  misunderstood  even  by 
the  choicest  of  French  spirits.  'Elle  s' est  fait  bergere'1  was 
Sainte-Beuve's  comment  on  George  Sand's  exquisite  idylls. 
To  French  writers  the  proper,  and  often  the  improper,  study 
of  mankind  is  man,  and  when  they  introduce  Nature  it  is 
with  an  axe  to  grind — as  an  adjunct  to  the  sublime,  or  as 
a  dramatic  effect,  in  the  pages  of  Chateaubriand  and  Victor 
Hugo  ;  or  as  an  aid  to  preaching  and  the  revelation  of 
God,  in  the  hands  of  Rousseau ;  or  as  a  symbol  of  a  revived 
and  classic  Paganism,  such  as  that  of  Maurice  de  Guerin  ; 
or  as  a  channel  of  aesthetic  sensibility,  in  the  pictures  of 
Loti  and  the  word-impressionists.  If  we  look  further  back, 
we  find  much  the  same.  Villon  and  Charles  d'Orleans,  it 
is  true,  used  Nature  simply,  but  they  had  a  scant  following. 
To  Ronsard  and  his  Pleiade  Nature  figured  as  a  grove  in 
which  to  read  the  classics  and  eat  peaches,  or  a  fountain 
whence  a  Nymph  might  arise.  Sometimes  they  seized 
details — they  sang  the  swallows,  or  April,  or  the  Winnowers  : 


THE  FRENCH  POINT  OF  VIEW  347 

but  these  were  stray  impressions.     No  whole  view  of  Nature, 
no  love  of  Nature  as  a  power  to  soothe   and    strengthen, 
existed  then  or  afterwards.    Throughout  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  Nature  slept,  smothered  beneath  hoops 
and   periwigs  ;  and  the  great  Revolution,  only  caring  for 
self-expression,  affected  torrents  and  precipices  as  bombastic 
symbols  of  inner  tempest,  and  went  into  the  country  because 
of  Rousseau.     No  Frenchman  could  have  said  :    '  The  Com- 
forter hath  found  me  here  upon  this  lonely  road  '  ;   for  him, 
the  Comforter  would  have  been  a  woman,  the  road  unendur- 
able if  lonely.     Cowper's  calm  pictures  of  winter  afternoons 
and   summer  mornings   would   have   counted   for  little   in 
France  beside  his  polished  versification  ;    Keats,  Coleridge, 
Shelley,  Tennyson  would  have  been  prized  for  their  ideas 
and  their  power  of  word-painting,  but  the  influence  of  the 
earth  which  they  painted  on  their  spirits  would  have  remained 
a  force  unknown ;  and  although  one  of  the  best  books  on 
Wordsworth  has  been  written  by  a  Frenchman,  to  the  bulk 
of  his  compatriots  that  High  Priest  of  Nature  must  remain 
but  half  comprehended.     A  Sovereign  Being  existing  apart 
from  us,  independent  of  our  emotions,  dwarfing  into  nothing 
those  passions  so  all-important  to  a  Frenchman,  linked  to 
man  only  in  so  far  as  man  can  empty  himself  of  himself  and 
go  out  to  Nature,  would  not  easily  appeal  to  VEsprit  Gaulois, 
in  the  literal  sense  of  that  phrase.     And  this  is  how  both 
Meredith  and  Jefferies,  as  well  as  Wordsworth,  feel  Nature. 
Yet  M.  Masseck  gets  no  further  than  :    '  Jefferies  is  the  type 
of  that  group  of  the  adorers  of  life,  who,  waking  while  other 
men  slept,  discovered  something  of  the  splendour  of  the 
world.  .  .  .  He  justified  his  existence  before  he  died.'     The 
definition    of    the    justification   is    incomplete.      Jefferies, 
dreamer,   revolutionary,   romancer,   embryo  thinker,   went 
beyond  the  mere  perception  of  splendour. 

But  these  students  of  English  authors  do  not  only  reveal 
the  French  attitude  towards  Nature.     Both  Meredith  and 


348  NEW  AND  OLD 

Jefferies  were,  we  have  seen,  like  Frenchmen  in  their  criti- 
cism of  the  relations  between  men  and  women.     They  were 
natural.     But   they   were   something  more   besides  ;     they 
went  further — and  this  is  what  interests  the  French.     For 
England — the  better  England,  not  the  land  of  Puritans — is 
not  in  these  matters  a  mere  imitator  of  France  ;    it  has  its 
own  point  of  view,  a  point  of  view  which  is  its  glory.     The 
French  consider  the  more  obvious  questions  of  the  senses 
as  outside  the  province  of  morals  and  below  the  level  of  the 
intellect ;    to  them  it  seems  false  and  out  of  place  to  bring 
them  before  an  ethical  tribunal.     A  Meredith,  a  Jefferies, 
would  no  less  acknowledge  such  questions  as  part  of  Nature, 
but,  unlike  the  French,  they  do  not  stop  there.     All  Nature 
—men,  beasts,  earth,  and  sea— says  Meredith  (and  Jefferies 
hymns  the  same),  is  one,  bound  together  by  indestructible 
ties.     When  we  try  to  break  them  we  sin  against  truth  and 
put  the  human  spirit  in  false  positions.     But  that  human 
spirit — also  a  part  of  Nature,  however  sublimated — has  a 
transforming    power.     It    can    convert    the    most    animal 
functions  of  man  into  his  highest  faculties- — it  can  link  the 
beast  with  the  angel ;    and  that  by  no  fantastic  evolution, 
no   transcendental   tricking  of  the  nerves,   but  by  simple 
honesty,  by  a  frank  acceptance  of  bare  facts,  by  first  acknow- 
ledging earth's  maternal  part  in  us  and  then  giving  that 
part  over  to  the  guardian  intellect  to  be  transmuted  '  into 
something   rich    and    strange.'     Falling    short  of    this,   we 
abuse  our  heritage  and  remain  of  the  dust,  dusty.     English 
poets  have  before  now  borne  this  message  variously  ex- 
pressed.     Donne,    Browning,    Kingsley  have   been   among 
them.     But  Donne   was   an   Elizabethan ;     and   Browning 
and  Kingsley  were  affected  by  the  supernatural  view  of  the 
natural.     Neither  Meredith  nor  Jefferies  was  spiritual,  in 
the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.     They  were  high-souled 
Pagans,  apostles  of  a  modern  Pantheism;  and  so  it  is  the 
more  remarkable  that  they  were  mystics — mystics  of  matter, 


THE  FRENCH  POINT  OF  VIEW  349 

mystics  of  Nature,  knowing  no  difference  between  soul  and 
body,  regarding  nothing  natural  as  unclean,  taking  each 
part  as  a  symbol  of  the  whole,  and  looking  upon  every  germ 
as  a  being  with  endless  possibilities  to  be  unfolded  for  the 
good  of  the  world.  But  to  enter  Nature's  jungle,  to  find 
your  way  there  and  pierce  to  her  innermost,  needs  courage  : 

Enter  these  enchanted  woods, 

You  who  dare. 
Nothing  harms  beneath  the  leaves  .   .  . 

Then  is  courage  that  endures 
Even  her  awful  tremble  yours  .  .  . 

Here  you  meet  the  light  invoked, 
Here  is  never  secret  cloaked  .  .   . 

Are  you  of  the  stiff,  tbe  dry, 
Cursing  the  not  understood  .  .  . 
Hate,  the  shadow  of  a  grain, 
You  are  lost  in  Westermain. 

This  is  mysticism  ;  and  '  The  Woods  of  Westermain  '  may 
well  stand  as  an  epitome  of  the  faith  of  Meredith  and 
Jefferies.  Their  point  of  view  is  a  surprise  to  France — 
new  and  exciting  ;  not  so  high-pitched  or  un-material  as  to 
offend  its  sceptical  common  sense,  yet  partaking  of  that 
romance  which  belongs  to  the  North — and  in  thought, 
perhaps,  especially  to  England  :  a  romance,  as  like  as  not, 
born  of  struggle  with  rain  and  cold,  with  that  very  Nature 
who  engenders  our  creed.  The  courage  invoked  by  Meredith 
as  a  condition  of  initiation  into  Nature's  secrets  must  strike 
fresh  on  the  mind  of  an  average  Frenchman,  since  in  those 
secrets  he  sees  no  dangers  but  the  obvious  ones — practical 
perils  and  inconveniences.  Montaigne  said  that  animals 
were  paragons  to  men.  Hamlet  said  that  man  was  the 
paragon  of  animals.  And  it  was  reserved  for  English  poets 
to  see  as  nakedly  as  Zola  and  to  hope  as  high  as  Victor  Hugo. 
England  has  wrestled  with  Nature — has  vowed  that  it  will 
not  let  her  go  until  she  has  revealed  her  name.  And  the 
French  critics  are  beginning  to  be  alive  to  the  fact.     (1913.) 


350  NEW  AND  OLD 


ZOLA,  MANET,  AND   THE   ART   OF 

EFFECTS 

Art,  as  we  know,  perhaps,  too  well  by  now,  is  not  moral. 
But,  for  all  that,  as  Tolstoi  says,  every  work  of  art  sets  up 
a  moral  relation  between  itself  and  the  public — as  that 
which  affects  the  feelings  and  sensibilities  is  bound  to  do  ; 
and  an  art  that  provoked  neither  like  nor  dislike,  neither 
pain  nor  pleasure,  would  not  be  an  art  at  all.  Our  moral 
selves  follow  us  like  our  shadows,  thrown  by  an  unseen 
sun,  and,  do  what  we  will,  we  cannot  elude  them.  If  there 
should  be  an  art,  therefore,  which  appeals  first  and  fore- 
most to  the  brain,  it  would  seem  to  be  a  kind  of  anomaly, 
a  cold-blooded  creation  devoid  of  warmth  and  doomed  to 
mortality.  Yet  this  kind  of  art  is  just  what  has  been  given 
us  by  two  of  the  most  prominent  creators  of  modern  times, 
men  who  have  made  a  school  and  have  a  large  family  of 
disciples. 

And  yet  their  fame,  if  we  consider  it,  gives  matter  for 
some  reflection,  their  work  and  its  developments  still  more 
so.  Art,  it  may  be  said,  has  made  a  mesalliance  with  science, 
and  the  names  of  her  sons  are  Gustave  Manet,  the  painter, 
and  Emile  Zola,  the  writer.  They  are  essentially  the 
offspring  of  an  unhappy  marriage,  sad  and  ill  at  ease, 
trying  in  vain  to  effect  a  reconciliation  between  their  in- 
congruous parents.  The  consequence  is  that  they  have 
bequeathed  to  us  a  number  of  books  and  pictures  in  which 
science  comes  first,  and  the  human  element  is  subordinate 
to  what  it  is  put  there  to  prove.  If  Manet  paints  a  nude 
woman  with  a  piece  of  black  velvet  round  her  neck,  it  is  not 
because  the  woman  is  interesting,  but  only  to  show  certain 
effects  of  light  upon  flesh.  And  if  Zola  portrays  his  groups 
of  peasants,  shopmen,  artisans,  or  artists,  they  exist  mainly 


ZOLA,  MANET,  AND  THE  ART  OF  EFFECTS     351 

to  demonstrate  some  specific  formula  of  Naturalism,  some 
scholastic  rule  of  environment,  heredity,  or  what  not ;  and 
they  move  as  exponents  of  the  rule  much  more  than  as 
dramatis  personae.  Before  such  an  art,  the  emotions  are 
forced  to  retire,  dumb  and  defeated. 

At  this  moment,  when  at  length  Zola's  work  is  before  us 
in  all  its  completeness  and  his  last  volume  has  appeared, 
it  is  impossible  not  to  ponder  upon  all  that  he  accomplished 
in  his  lifetime  ;    upon  his  '  colossal  industry  '  and  the  issues 
of  his  art,  that  Naturalistic  art  of  which  he  was  one  initiator, 
while  Manet,  in  the  painting  world,  was  another.     Never, 
perhaps,  before  did  brush  and  pen  more  closely  work  together 
for  the  same  end,  in  the  same  spirit,  and  by  much  the  same 
methods.     And  the  fact  is  emphasised  by  Zola's  reproduc- 
tion of  Manet's  masterpiece,   '  Plein  Air,'  the  great,  slowly- 
wrought  canvas  at  which  the  public  would  only  laugh  in 
derision.     It  is  easy  enough  to  deprecate  the  peculiarities 
of  these  men,  to  smile  at  Manet's  absurdities,  to  be  dis- 
gusted at  Zola's  crudities  ;   but  this  is  not  to  criticise  them. 
Serious  and  devoted  persons  with  large  aims,  they  deserve 
serious  and  untrammelled  judgment.     The  heroic  energy 
of  Zola,  the  much-enduring  patience  of  Manet,  are  qualities 
to  remember.     Zola  was  an  earnest  social  reformer  willing 
to  suffer  for  his  cause  ;    Manet  lived  largely  unrecognised 
and  died   in    great  poverty.      Such  dignified  servants    of 
art,  if  we  go  forth  willing  to  admire  them,  should,  it  would 
seem,   stir  something  deeper  than  our  intellects.     Yet  to 
stir  the  intellect  is  their  chief  effect,  even  upon  those  who 
care  most  for  them  ;  while  a  large  number  of  people,  anxious 
enough  to  be  in  touch  with  them,   come  away  feeling  a 
void — interested,  maybe,  but  questioning.     The  fact  is,  if 
we  look  deep  enough,  that  they  make  a  fundamental  error. 
They   confuse  Truth  and   Knowledge,     But  knowledge  is 
not  truth  ;   it  is  only  a  part  of  truth's  domains— the  avenue 
that  leads  to  the  temple.     Truth  lies  in  no  one  thing,  but 


352  NEW  AND  OLD 

in  the  relations  of  all  things  ;  in  the  balance  between  know- 
ledge and  feeling,  thought  and  expression,  form  and  matter. 
Gare  a  nous,  if  we  make  truth  less  than  she  is.  Of  those 
who  take  fact  for  truth  it  is  easy  to  recognise  the  ignominy  ; 
we  have  but  to  send  to  Mudie  for  any  of  the  '  realistic  ' 
novels  now  in  vogue,  Blue-book  records  of  grim  or  brutal 
details,  from  which  all  that  in  actual  life  relieves  them  is 
eliminated.  But  of  those  who  confound  truth  with  know- 
ledge the  fallacy  is  graver,  its  results  more  subtle. 

A  fallacy  seen  with  our  eyes  is  much  the  easiest  to  under- 
stand ;  and  therefore  it  may  be  best  to  observe  first  how 
this  one  acted  upon  the  painter's — the  Impressionist 
painter's — art,  or  rather  upon  that  of  Gustave  Manet,  who 
sums  up  all  the  rest.  For  what  is  true  of  him  is  more  or 
less  true  of  Monet,  of  Pizarro,  of  Sisley,  of  Renoir,  of  all 
their  lesser  disciples.  Let  us  take  for  our  purpose  Manet's 
'  Plein  Air  '- — the  picture  which  raised  such  an  outcry  when 
it  first  appeared  in  the  Salon,  and  ended,  nevertheless,  by 
making  a  school.  The  canvas  is  large,  the  time  is  summer, 
the  place  is  a  wood  ;  the  full  June  light  falls  golden-green 
through  the  branches  and  chequers  the  forest  floor.  It 
falls,  too,  upon  a  nude  woman  who  oits  just  beyond  the 
trees,  her  flesh  bathed  by  the  sun  ;  by  her  side  is  a  gentle- 
man, swathed  in  black  velvet  to  his  chin,  his  hands  cased 
in  black  peau-de-Suede  gloves.  Beyond,  in  a  glade,  some 
more  figures — not  nymphs,  but  nude  women — are  sporting 
together  on  the  grass.  In  spite  of  the  rich  warmth  and 
sunshine,  the  impression  is  not  one  of  bountiful  summer,  of 
splendid  goddesses,  or  beautiful  women,  but  one  of  absolute 
matter-of-fact.  Here  is  no  midsummer  exuberance  ;  on 
the  contrary,  the  picture  is  pervaded  by  a  kind  of  con- 
scientious low  spirits.  One  consequence  is  that  it  appears 
quite  irrational  that  these  ladies  should  have  chosen  this 
particular  spot  in  which  to  take  off  their  garments,  while 
their   escort    remains    so    unnecessarily    burdened    by    his 


ZOLA,  MANET,  AND  THE  ART  OF  EFFECTS     353 

winter  suit.  Nothing  before  us  seems  natural,  everything 
has  to  be  accounted  for.  Our  first  impulse  is  to  laugh,  our 
second  to  wonder.  We  probably  begin  by  thinking  that 
the  absurdity  lies  in  the  subject.  But,  after  all,  Giorgione 
has  chosen  much  the  same  theme  for  his  '  Fete  Champetrc  ' 
in  the  Salon  Carre,  and  no  one  dreams  of  laughing  at  that, 
unless  it  be  for  pure  joy.  Glory  is  the  note  of  the  whole 
sumptuous  picture,  the  glory  of  life,  the  glory  of  the  year 
and  of  beauty.  Here  we  feel  no  questioning ;  the  entire 
work  is  in  the  order  of  things.  The  woman-goddess  clothed 
in  sunlight,  the  romantically  dressed  musician,  are  instinct 
with  life  and  poetry,  because  Giorgione  enjoyed  painting 
them  and  felt  them  to  be  part  of  the  summer.  The  effect 
of  light  upon  the  woman's  body  is  as  accurate  as  that  which 
Manet  gets,  but  Giorgione  painted  it  thus  because  it  was 
there,  not  because  he  wanted  it  to  be  so  ;  and  to  us  it  is 
but  part  of  the  woman.  And  here  we  have  the  secret  of 
the  matter,  the  gulf  that  stretches  between  these  men. 
Manet  painted  his  picture  entirely  for  the  sake  of  the  effect 
of  warm  light  upon  bare  flesh,  upon  soft  stuff,  and  on  grass 
when  the  sunshine  falls  through  forest  branches.  He 
deliberately  chose  the  subject  which  would  best  expound 
his  theories,  without  the  slightest  regard  as  to  its  human 
probability.  His  demand  is  scientific,  not  artistic,  and 
human  beings  are  to  him  the  more  or  less  vile  bodies  on 
which  to  make  his  experiments.  But  in  art  the  human, 
the  natural  element,  comes  first,  and  the  infringement  of 
this  vital  decree  brings  its  consequences.  Nature  herself, 
so  quick  to  meet  her  real  lovers — a  Turner,  a  Daubigny,  a 
Corot — becomes  depressed  and  inarticulate  when  Manet 
approaches  her.  And  his  human  beings,  indignant  at  being 
used  first  as  light-traps  and  only  secondly  for  their  own 
sakes,  lose  imagination  and  vitality  and  become  the  most 
literal  of  bourgeois.  Velasquez,  the  master  on  whom  so 
many  of  Manet's  school  claim  to  model  themselves,  would 

z 


354  NEW  AND  OLD 

never  have  dealt  thus  with  his  subjects.  To  him,  great 
dramatist  that  he  was,  the  human  element  came  royally 
first ;  his  '  effects,'  however  mighty,  followed  after.  When 
we  look  at  Manet's  portrait  of  a  woman  (also  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg), at  the  appalling  countenance,  the  ragged  medley 
of  browns  and  sallow  yellows,  we  are  inclined  to  think  that 
the  ugliness  of  his  themes  is  at  fault.  But  whoever,  last 
year,  had  the  happiness  of  visiting  the  Bruges  Exhibition 
of  old  Flemish  pictures,  will  quickly  realise  that  ugliness 
has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  What  can  be  uglier  or  sincerer 
(and  sincerity  is  the  Impressionist's  watchword)  than  many 
of  these  Flemish  paintings — Van  Eyck's  portrait  of  his 
wife,  for  instance,  than  whom  no  woman  could  be  plainer  ? 
But  there  is  a  majesty,  a  mastery,  about  the  ugliness  he 
depicts,  because,  to  the  best  of  his  powers,  he  was  trying  to 
express  all  he  saw  and  to  harmonise  his  knowledge.  The 
homeliness  is  supremely  interesting,  because  it  is  animated 
by  the  soul  that  lives  in  the  eyes  ;  by  the  artist's  reverence 
for  humanity  ;  by  the  all-surrounding  atmosphere  of  beauty. 
And  Van  Eyck's  successors  have  the  same  princely  gift. 
The  plainest  Virgin,  the  most  commonplace  of  men  and 
women,  are  touched  with  a  glowing  dignity  that  lifts  them 
—and  all  mankind  with  them— to  a  higher  level.  Yet 
the  Flemings  rejected  neither  intellect  nor  the  secrets  of 
their  craft ;  their  work  is  full  of  both.  Only,  to  them, 
their  subject  as  it  stood  there,  the  truth  as  they  saw  it, 
came  first.  The  fire  that  warmed  them  was  not  of  the 
brain  but  of  the  spirit. 

It  may  perhaps  be  easier  now,  after  looking  at  Manet,  to 
turn  to  Zola's  novels  and  to  glance  at  his  methods.  No 
more  than  the  defects  of  Manet  do  those  of  Zola's  books 
spring,  as  at  first  sight  appears,  either  from  the  ugliness  of 
his  subjects,  or  from  the  stress  he  lays  on  certain  vices. 
The  weakness  of  his  work,  its  frequent  want  of  vitality, 
really  comes  from  the  secondary  place  that  he  assigns  to 


ZOLA,  MANET,  AND  THE  ART  OF  EFFECTS     855 

human  beings.     For  him,  too,  science  takes  precedence  of 

them  and  they  figure  as  his  illustrations  of  certain  scientific 

laws,    predestined    by    him    to    succumb    to    the   infallible 

machinery.     But  this,  well  enough,  however  depressing,  in 

a  pamphlet,  means  death  to  the  novel,  because  it  eliminates 

all  drama  from  life.     We  know  beforehand  what  the  fate 

of  the  victims  will  be,  and  we  lose  interest  in  them.     There 

is  no  struggle  of  the  soul,  no  assertion  of  itself,  no  illusion 

of  the  spirit ;  he  gives  us  none  of  those  things  which  make 

us  want  to  go  on  with  the  game.     Life,  as  Zola  shows  it, 

has  neither  hills  nor  plains  ;    it  becomes  like  the  rolling 

trottoir  in    the    Paris    Exhibition,    a    construction    hardly 

raised  above  the  lowest  level,  swarming  with  common  people 

and  futile  energies,  hot  and  dusty  and  malodorous,  ever 

moving  and   ever  deadly  monotonous.     One   cannot  help 

coming  away  from  it  encanaille  and  dejected.     There  are, 

after  all,  many  volumes  on  subjects  as  unbeautiful  as  those 

that    Zola    elaborates.     Tolstoi's    Resurrection    is    terrible 

enough  in  its  theme.     Yet  let  who  will  read  it  and  then 

read  one  of  Zola's  many  versions  of  a  fallen  woman  (his 

novels  are  not  lacking  in  them),  and  he  will  not  be  slow  to 

measure  the  difference  between  the  two.     Tolstoi,  no  less 

than  Zola,  deals  with  big  natural  laws  ;    the  laws  of  health 

and  heredity  are  ever  present  with  him.     But  he  does  not 

foredoom  his  characters  to  fall  a  prey  to  them  ;    he  loves 

his  human  being  more  than  these  great  rules  ;    he  allows 

man's  soul  to  join  issue  with  them  and  to  found  a  spiritual 

law  of  its  own.     In  spite,  or  rather  because,  of  his  profound 

Realism,  his  man  and  woman  win  the  day  and  send  us  back 

encouraged  into  life. 

In  limited  space  it  would  be  as  tedious  as  it  is  impossible 
to  present  Zola's  limitless  canvases  to  the  eye  as  if  they 
were  Manet's.  For  the  absence  of  soul  and  of  struggle 
detract  from  individuality  ;  and,  as  a  writer  recently  pointed 
out  in  the  Journal  des  Debats,  Zola  creates  types,  represen- 


356  NEW  AND  OLD 

tative  of  various  laws,  rather  than  personalities.  You  can 
take  up  any  of  his  volumes,  and  whether  he  is  describing 
the  strata  of  the  artists,  or  of  the  working  classes,  or  examin- 
ing the  layers  of  religious  sensation,  you  will  come  upon 
much  the  same  people,  the  same  common  denominators, 
working  in  different  atmospheres,  among  different  smells 
and  sounds.  There  are  pages  of  immense  power,  of  absorb- 
ing interest,  of  forcible  insight  into  the  passions,  into  causes 
and  effects  ;  there  are  descriptions — may  we  say  so  ? — of  a 
gigantic  minuteness.  But  when  all  is  said,  his  people  are 
only  accessories,  and  his  theory  of  art  condemns  them  so  to 
remain.  The  men  just  before  Zola— the  great  novelist, 
Flaubert,  who  was  growing  old  while  Zola  was  young- 
drove  science  as  far  as  she  might  go.  If  any  one  objects 
that  the  idealist  Tolstoi  is  no  fitting  subject  for  comparison 
with  Zola,  let  them  turn  to  Madame  Bovary,  which  no 
man  will  accuse  of  optimism.  That,  too,  belongs  to  the 
terrible,  the  dusty  school  of  novel.  But  we  read  it  to  the 
bitter  end  and,  when  we  have  finished,  the  picture  is  clear 
before  our  eyes.  It  is  not  woman  we  are  conscious  of,  the 
victim  of  a  Juggernaut  rule  ;  but  a  woman — her  drama, 
her  weakness,  its  Nemesis — the  human  element  which  alone 
clinches  an  impression.     (1903.) 


THE   FANTASTIC   ELEMENT  AND 
MR.  BARRIE 

The  kingdom  of  fantasy  is  a  kingdom  by  itself,  quite  apart 
from  the  kingdom  of  imagination.  Who  shall  lay  down  the 
boundaries  of  either  ?  And  yet  we  cannot  but  know  that 
imagination  is  the  bigger  of  the  two  ;  it  moves  the  feel- 
ings ;  it  implies  a  spiritual  quality,  call  it  moral  or  intel- 
lectual or  what  you  will.     But  fantasy  is  born  of  sprites, 


FANTASTIC  ELEMENT  AND  Mil.  IJAllIUE      357 

and  its  essence  is  to  go  no  further  than  sentiment  and  to 
move  nothing  profounder  that  the  sensibilities.  These  the 
true  fantasy  must  touch  ;  it  must  caress,  it  must  mystify 
them  ;  often  leaving  us  to  stand  doubtful  in  that  misty, 
pensive  land  which  lies  between  tears  and  laughter.  The 
charm  of  fantasy  is  its  elusiveness,  and  if  it  had  heart  or 
conscience  or  came  too  near  reality  it  would  cease  to  be 
fantasy  at  all.  Harlequin  has  ever  been  the  king  of  the 
fantastics ;  Harlequin,  the  dancer,  the  glittering  and 
enigmatic,  with  the  half-mask  that  shows  his  jesting  lips 
and  hides  his  eyes.  For  all  we  know,  there  may  be  pathos 
in  them,  or  his  love  for  Columbine,  but  his  step  is  not  the 
less  light  for  that.  He  carries  his  lath  like  a  sceptre,  but 
none  can  tell  who  are  his  subjects,  and  he  flashes  past  us 
before  we  can  ask  him. 

It  is  easier  to  recognise  what  is  fantasy  than  to  define  it ; 
and  it  is  perhaps  in  painting,  where  the  eye  beholds  its 
embodiment,  that  the  quality  is  most  easily  perceived. 
So  much  will  be  conceded  by  whoever  has  loved  Watteau 
and  Fragonard,  or  looked  at  Stothard,  or  delighted  in 
Richard  Doyle — Richard  Doyle,  painter-laureate  to  Queen 
Mab,  the  man  with  the  child's  heart  and  the  poet's  brush. 
Other  names  will  occur  to  the  reader's  mind.  But  Watteau 
comes  first,  Watteau  the  profoundly  poetic,  who  was  also 
supreme  as  a  fantastic.  He  leads  us  into  an  enchanted 
irresponsible  world,  a  world  of  rapture  and  of  melancholy, 
where  Pierrots  look  sad  and  lutes  play  songs  about  the 
end  of  things — where  lovers,  in  dresses  made  of  moonlight, 
who  have  nothing  to  do  with  reality,  wander  deep  into  the 
blue  alleys  of  dreamland  and  lose  themselves  in  distance. 
Lancret  and  Pater  took  the  same  themes  as  he  did,  but 
they  only  give  us  brilliant  and  light-hearted  fact.  It  is  the 
passionate  fantasy  in  Watteau's  pictures  which  lifts  and 
transmutes  the  subjects. 

Your  true  fantastic  is  a  sentimentalist.  Sterne,  the  greatest 


358  NEW  AND  OLD 

of  sentimentalists,  is  also  one  of  the  greatest  of  fantastics. 
But  it  is  a  kind  of  whimsical,  intellectual  fancy  peculiar 
to  himself.  The  twelfth  and  thirteenth  chapters  of  Book  ix. 
in  Tristram  Shandy  are  full  of  that '  gentlest  spirit  of  sweetest 
humour,'  as  he  himself  calls  it.  '  I  never  stand  conferring 
with  pen  and  ink  one  moment,'  he  says  ;  '  for  if  a  pinch  of 
snuff,  or  a  stride  or  two  across  the  room  will  not  do  the 
business  for  me — I  take  a  razor  at  once  .  .  .  lathering  my 
beard,  I  shave  it  off  .  .  .  this  done,  I  change  my  shirt — 
put  on  a  better  coat — send  for  my  last  wig — put  my  topaz 
ring  upon  my  finger.  .  .  .  Now  the  Devil  in  Hell  must  be 
in  it  if  this  does  not  do.'  It  is  mercifully  impossible  to 
analyse  charm,  or  to  discover  why  certain  literary  caprices 
please  us.  But  this  passage  owns  one  essential  of  fancy, 
a  sense  of  the  incongruous.  Sterne  takes  the  common 
daily  processes  of  dressing  and  of  shaving,  and  puts  them 
to  uncommon  purposes.  He  surrounds  the  real  with  the 
unreal,  which  is  the  whole  duty  of  fantastics. 

The  simplest  kind  of  fancy  is  the  fairy-tale  kind — the 
sort  of  thing  that  Mr.  George  Macdonald  understood  so  well 
in  his  Phantasies.  But  the  subtle  charm  of  contrast  and 
of  the  incongruous  is  wanting  here.  The  whole  story  lies 
in  the  region  of  the  magical  and  impossible.  Fantasy,  it 
is  true,  lives  on  air,  far  away  from  the  real ;  and  yet,  to 
be  interesting,  it  must  possess  intangible  relations  with 
reality.  Intangible,  however,  they  must  be.  They  must 
never  weigh  us  down,  as  they  do  in  the  modern  German, 
the  heavily  responsible,  fairy-story ;  such  an  allegory 
charged  with  problems  as  Hauptmann's  V ersunkene  Glocke, 
lately  acted  in  London.  This  play  and  its  kind  come  forth 
mature  and  fully  armed  from  the  heads  of  pessimist  philo- 
sophers. They  aim  at  being  fantastic  and  have  both  feet 
solemnly  planted  upon  earth.  Controversy  unfortunately 
seems  to  have  taken  refuge  in  art,  and  controversy  is  death 
to  fancy,  especially  when  it  is  that  of  the  dogmatic  free- 


FANTASTIC  ELEMENT  AND  MR.  BARRIE      359 

thought,  now  in  fashion,  which  all  goes  to  prove  the  things 
that  we  have  no  wish  to  know.  This  is  a  depressing  busi- 
ness when  it  is  carried  into  fairyland.  It  is  time  that  some 
kind-hearted  person  should  found  a  Society  for  the  Preven- 
tion of  Cruelty  to  Fairies,  and  take  from  their  poor  little 
shoulders  the  vast  moral  burdens  now  laid  on  them.  Shake- 
speare and  Charles  Lamb  would  have  wept  to  see  them  put 
there.  And  if  controversy  thus  crushes  fancy,  mysticism  is 
little  better.  Those  (and  there  are  such)  who  confound 
mysticism  with  fancy  make  a  spiritual  blunder,  for,  sooner 
or  later,  they  are  bound  to  err  against  the  fitness  of  things. 
Shakespeare  and  Lamb,  each  in  his  measure,  were  men 
of  imagination.  But,  when  they  wanted,  they  could  doff 
the  greater  quality  and  become  pure  fantastics.  The  fairies 
of  A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream  remain  a  pattern  to  all 
fairies  for  evermore.  And  none  who  have  read  Elia's 
'  Defeat  of  Time,'  in  which  the  spirit  of  Shakespeare  defends 
the  fairies  against  Time's  scythe,  could  reject  Charles  Lamb 
as  an  elfin  psychologist.  '  Titania  and  her  moonlight  elves 
[it  begins]  were  assembled  under  the  canopy  of  a  huge  oak, 
that  served  to  shelter  them  from  the  moon's  radiance,  which, 
being  now  at  her  full  noon,  shot  forth  intolerable  rays — 
intolerable,  I  mean,  to  the  subtil  texture  of  their  little 
shadowy  bodies — but  dispensing  an  agreeable  coolness  to 
us  grosser  mortals.'  This  is  the  prettiest  piece  of  gossamer 
and  yet  not  too  ethereal  to  be  real.  The  whole  essay 
crowns  Charles  Lamb  for  what  he  was — a  past  master  in 
whimsies.1  Or  there  is  Heinrich  Heine,  Harlequin's  favourite 
Councillor.  Indeed,  he  is  almost  Harlequin  himself  as  he 
flits  and  flashes  on  his  road,  mocking  and  melancholy, 
piercing  the  air  with  his  golden  lath,  which  turns  into  a 
gleaming  scimitar ;  the  Heine  of  Der  Eabbi  von  Bacharach 

1  [In  a  letter  printed  in  the  Literary  Supplement  Canon  Ainger  pointed 
out  that  'The  Defeat  of  Time 'is  avowedly  a  prose  version  by  Lamb  of  a 
portion  of  Hood's  beautiful  poem  '  The  Plea  of  the  Midsummer  Fairies.'] 


360  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  Das  Buck  Le  Grand  and  a  score  of  dreaming  poems. 
Like  all  fantastics,  he  understood  children  ;  so  did  Hans 
Christian  Andersen.  Andersen  is  often  too  poetic  and 
deep-feeling  to  be  fantastic  ;  but  when  he  gives  vent  to  his 
humour  no  one  can  be  more  so,  no  one  can  hover  more 
enchantingly  between  tears  and  laughter.  We  do  not  know 
which  to  give  way  to  when  we  remember  '  The  hardy  tin 
soldier,'  so  brave,  so  galant,  so  possible,  so  impossible.  He 
was  one  of  many  :  '  They  shouldered  their  muskets  and 
looked  straight  before  them — their  uniform  was  red  and 
blue  and  very  splendid  .  .  .  but  one  of  them  had  been 
cast  last  of  all  and  there  had  not  been  enough  tin  to  finish 
him  ;  yet  he  stood  as  firmly  upon  his  one  leg  as  the  others 
on  their  two  ;  and  it  was  just  this  soldier  who  became  re- 
markable.' He  fell  in  love,  as  we  all  know,  with  the  dancing 
paper-lady  of  the  cardboard  castle,  but  in  the  midst  of 
his  happiness  he  tumbled  out  of  window.  He  was  instantly 
sought  for.  If  he  '  had  cried  out  "  Here  I  am,"  they  would 
have  found  him  ;  but  he  did  not  think  it  fitting  to  call  out 
loudly,  because  he  was  in  uniform.'  The  whole  of  etiquette 
and  of  military  honour  seems  to  be  compressed  into  this 
sentence,  and  yet,  all  the  while,  we  feel  that  the  episode  is 
deliciously  remote  from  us.  This  is  what  makes  fancy 
convincing,  and  the  charm  of  it  is  that  it  convinces  us 
against  our  reason.  Andersen,  the  magician,  was  well 
versed  in  the  spell. 

There  has  been  no  one  to  compare  with  him  till  Mr.  Barrie 
wrote  The  Little  White  Bird.  And  when  we  mention  Mr. 
Barrie,  we  mention,  perhaps,  the  most  distinguished  fan- 
tastic now  alive.  He  differs  from  Andersen  in  many  ways  ; 
he  has  more  humour,  but  he  is  neither  so  much  the  poet 
nor  so  much  the  artist  as  his  predecessor.  Yet  he  resembles 
him  in  that  fascinating  and  elusive  power  of  mingling  matter- 
of-fact  and  fancy — the  same  combination  that  makes 
children  such  enchanting,  such  alarming  companions. 


FANTASTIC  ELEMENT  AND  MK.  BARRIE      3fil 

It  is  frightfully  difficult  to  know  anything  about  the  fairi 
[he  writes],  and  almost  the  only  thing  known  for  certain  is  that 
there  are  fairies  wherever  there  are  children.  .  .  .  When  the 
first  baby  laughed  for  the  first  time  his  laugh  broke  into  a 
million  pieces  and  they  all  went  skipping  about.  That  was  the 
beginning  of  fairies.  .  .  .  They  are  frightfully  ignorant,  and 
everything  they  do  is  make-believe.  They  have  a  postman, 
but  he  never  calls  except  at  Christmas  with  his  little  box,  and, 
though  they  have  beautiful  schools,  nothing  is  taught  them  ; 
the  youngest  child,  being  chief  person,  is  always  elected 
mistress,  and  when  she  has  called  the  roll  they  all  go  out  for  a 
walk  and  never  come  back. 

There  is  a  particular  pleasure  in  being  so  swiftly  carried 
from  fancy  to  fact  and  back  again.  The  whole  story  of 
Peter  Pan,  half  child,  half  bird,  who  lived  on  the  island  on 
the  Serpentine  and  played  his  exquisite  pipe — divided 
between  joy  in  his  bird  life  and  desire  to  return  to  his  mother 
— is  full  of  this  delicate  art.  So  is  the  description  of  the 
fairy  wedding  : 

Brownie  held  out  her  arms  to  the  Duke  and  he  flung  himself 
into  them,  the  Queen  leapt  into  the  arms  of  the  Lord 
Chamberlain,  and  the  ladies  of  the  court  leapt  into  the  arms  of 
her  gentlemen,  for  it  is  etiquette  to  follow  her  example  in 
everything.  Thus  in  a  single  moment  about  fifty  marriages 
took  place,  for  if  you  leap  into  each  other's  arms  it  is  a  fairy 
wedding.     Of  course  a  clergyman  has  to  be  present. 

If  the  fairies  possess  an  Academie  they  surely  ought  to 
crown  Mr.  Barrie  for  that  last  sentence. 

He  is,  indeed,  a  true  fantastic,  armed  cap-a-pie  with  all 
the  characteristics  of  his  race  ;  and  it  may  be  well  to  re- 
capitulate them  roughly.  The  true  fantastic,  so  it  seems, 
must  (as  far  as  his  work  goes)  possess  no  heart ;  he  must 
have  plenty  of  sentiment ;  he  must  abound  in  a  sense  of 
the  exquisite  and  in  power  over  the  incongruous,  and  he 
must  only  have  just  so  much  moral  sense  as  to  make  a 


362  NEW  AND  OLD 

half-invisible  thread  between  himself  and  his  public.  To 
all  these  requirements  Mr.  Barrie  answers.  His  fantasy 
is  charmingly  heartless.  If  it  were  not  he  could  never  have 
killed  Timothy.  Timothy  (as  most  of  us  know)  is  the  make- 
believe  child  of  the  old  bachelor  who  tells  the  story  of  the 
little  white  bird — the  child  whom  he  invents  in  a  moment 
of  sympathy  with  an  anxious  father  and  then  kills  off,  in 
order  to  give  him  a  pretext  for  presenting  clothes  and  toys 
to  the  baby  of  his  poorer  friend,  the  painter  : 

c  How  is  Timothy  ?  '  he  asked  ;  and  the  question  opened  a 
way  so  attractive  that  I  think  no  one  whose  dull  life  craves  for 
colour  could  have  resisted  it.  '  He  is  no  more/  I  replied 
impulsively.  The  painter  was  so  startled  that  he  gave  utterance 
to  a  very  oath  of  pity,  and  I  felt  a  sinking  myself,  for  in  these 
hasty  words  my  little  boy  was  gone  indeed ;  all  my  bright 
dreams  of  Timothy,  all  my  efforts  to  shelter  him  from  Mary's 
scorn,  went  whistling  down  the  wind. 

If  Mr.  Barrie  had  really  been  feeling,  had  been  sounding 
the  unfathomable  grief  that  the  death  of  a  child  means,  he 
would  never  have  dared  to  play  round  it ;  nor  should  we 
have  consented  to  follow  him.  He  would  have  brought 
his  heart  into  the  matter  and  spoiled  the  fantasy.  But 
fantasy  is  an  illusion  to  which  we  ourselves  consent ;  Mr. 
Barrie  duly  lets  us  into  his  secret,  and  we  know  that  he  is 
sporting  with  us.  He  deliberately  leads  us  up  to  the  brink 
of  tears,  tickles  our  sensibilities,  and  then  abruptly  leaves 
us  dry-eyed,  pervaded  by  a  luxurious  melancholy.  None 
knows  better  than  he  that  fancy  is  a  matter  of  half -tints. 
We  need  only  restrict  ourselves  to  his  two  last  works,  for 
he  practises  the  same  art  with  equal  success  in  that  delight- 
ful piece  of  fantasy  The  Admirable  Crichton.  Here  it  is 
always  the  unreal  winch  convinces  us,  and  the  real  which 
seems  fictitious.  He  carries  us  with  him  over  all  the 
vagaries  of  life  on  his  desert-island,  and  it  is  only  when  he 
tries   to  introduce  a  real  love-affair  that  we  hesitate  to 


FANTASTIC  ELEMENT  AND  MR.  BARRIE      303 

believe,  and  feel  as  if  a  piece  of  waterproof  had  been 
suddenly  sewn  on  to  a  web.  By  plunging  into  poetry 
where  he  should  have  only  used  sentiment  Mr.  Barrie 
betrays  himself. 

But  in  sentiment  he  is  a  connoisseur.  We  need  hardly 
formulate  as  much  About  the  man  who  wrote  Sentimental 
Tommy.  He  is  quite  aware  that  true  sentiment  must  be 
without  compassion.  His  sentiment,  if  you  examine  it, 
is  most  delicately  pitiless.  He  has  an  elfin  sense  of  the 
foibles  of  mankind — the  sense  of  an  elfin  epicure — and  also 
the  gift  of  expressing  it.  His  sentiment  is  his  deadliest 
weapon,  yet  his  malice  is  so  gentle  and  playful  that,  as 
often  as  not,  he  tricks  us  into  taking  it  for  grace  and  courtesy. 
Such  qualities  are  the  birthright  of  the  satirist,  and,  in  a 
good  hour  for  the  public,  Mr.  Barrie  has  discovered  that 
fantasy  is  a  subtle  medium  for  satire.  There  is  hardly  a 
drop  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness  in  the  whole  of  The 
Admirable  Crichton  ;  all  its  fun  is  due  to  the  failings  of 
its  characters  ;  the  T weenie,  though  loyal,  is  an  abstrac- 
tion, and  even  Crichton  himself,  who  comes  so  near  to  being 
our  '  favourite  hero  in  fiction,'  ends  by  being  absurd.  This 
fact  is  perhaps  hidden  by  exuberance,  and,  indeed,  it  is 
Mr.  Barrie's  gift  for  the  incongruous  that  helps  him  to  go 
along  so  affably.  He  has  perceived  (and  this  is  probably 
the  most  cruel  and  valuable  of  his  perceptions)  that,  so 
long  as  you  understand  how  not  to  wound  men's  vanity, 
you  may  say  the  most  scornful  things  to  them  and  they 
will  not  recognise  them.  So  he  leads  his  public  kindly 
into  the  realm  of  the  impossible,  and  when  they  are  com- 
fortably seated — safe,  as  they  think,  from  personalities — 
he  has  at  them.  For  fancy  can  suggest  what  no  sermon  can 
preach.  No  '  Contrat  Social '  turned  topsy-turvy  could 
more  clearly  reveal  than  does  this  play  the  Bashaw  that 
lives  in  every  man  and  the  slave  that  lives  in  every  woman  ; 
or  the  inherent  snobbishness  of  mankind  ;   or  their  want  of 


364  NEW  AND  OLD 

aspiration  and  originality  ;  or  their  servile  subjection  to 
tradition  ;  or  the  impossibility  of  being  natural  or  equal  or 
Utopian.  He  binds  his  fantasy  to  us  by  a  hundred  little 
gossamer  moral  threads.  Indeed,  we  are  inclined  to  believe 
that  Mr.  Barrie  himself  belongs  to  '  the  Little  Folk,'  that 
among  his  forbears  there  must  have  been  an  elf  who  married 
a  human  ;  and  we  feel  a  wish  to  put  fresh  junket  or  a  new 
sixpence  in  his  path,  or  to  do  something  else  to  propitiate 
him.  But,  as  we  say  this,  we  remember  the  lucky  hours 
that  his  books  have  brought  us  and  we  hail  him  as  a  good 
elf,  after  all. 

Is  it  far-fetched  to  suggest  that  fancy  is  the  child  of  the 
North — that  this  subtle  form  of  conception  is  born  of  the 
struggles  and  contrasts  and  complexities  arising  from  damp 
and  mist  ?  Southern  countries,  at  all  events,  do  not  seem 
to  have  much  to  do  with  fantasy,  and  both  the  Italians  and 
the  French,  who  are  matter-of-fact  enough,  have  all  their 
fancy  done  for  them  by  nature  and  the  sun.  However  that 
may  be,  two  of  the  best  fantastics  of  modern  days  have  been 
a  Dane  and  a  Scotsman  ;  and,  absurd  though  it  may  seem, 
we  cannot  but  nurse  a  hope  that  at  this  moment  Hans 
Christian  Andersen  is  enjoying  a  pirated  edition  of  The 
Little  White  Bird  in  Hades.     (1903.) 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


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